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Tag Archives: Delphi

See-r (2)

17 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Apollo, Babylonian, Claros, Delphi, Didyma, Dodona, Dr Seuss, epic metre, Etruscan, Extispicy, Flamen, Galadrien, Greek, Gustave Moreau, Haruspex, King Galdaran, Mirror of Galadriel, Oracle, Pytho, Rome, Romulus and Remus, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Theogony, Tolkien, Yoda

Here we are again, dear readers, welcoming you to the second half of that posting with the odd name—or at least the odd spelling.

In the first half of this, we began with questions about Galadriel’s mirror: where did it come from? What was it doing in the text?

image1galad.jpg

We saw that it had begun life in a manuscript note as the mirror of “King Galdaran”, but then became the mirror of “Galadrien” as JRRT smoothed and polished both the scene and the character.   In that earlier note—a kind of shorthand plot summary—it’s stated that, “King Galdaran says the mirror shows past, present, and future, and the skill needed to decide which…”—that is, one needs skill to decide which might be past, present, or future. Such skill, especially to read the future, led us to thinking about the history of attempting to read the future, and we briefly discussed the use of turtle plastrons (the underside of a turtle) and ox shoulder blades, then number patterns, in ancient China, dreams in Egypt, and the insides of certain animals in Babylon.

In this posting, we want to take that history a bit farther.

Just as the Babylonians practiced extispicy—the examination of the intestines of certain animals or birds—so did the Etruscans, whom we think of as Rome’s “big brothers”, as many Roman practices and customs appear to have been borrowed from them. In our last, we showed a Babylonian model of a sheep’s liver,

image2bab.jpg

presumably used as a guide to reading an actual liver. Here’s a bronze Etruscan model, with various areas marked off and labeled.

image3liver.jpg

And here’s a fourth-century bc bronze model of an Etruscan priest, a “haruspex”, the Romans would have called him.

image4haru.png

(Sometimes, even though we spend a great deal of time in the classical world, there are things which will always seem a little odd—the hat on this fellow can’t help but remind us of something from Dr Seuss,

image5cat.png

just as that on a Roman flamen—a kind of priest—makes us think of a certain propeller helmet…)

image6famen.jpg

image7prop.jpg

Romans borrowed the custom from the Etruscans, it seems, and also read bird-signs. In fact, it was a disagreement over the interpretation of a flight of birds which may have sparked the murder of one of the founders of Rome, Remus, by his twin brother, Romulus.

image8rom.jpg

Besides Etruscan and home-grown methods of trying to find out about the future, the Romans also continued the Greek tradition of visiting prophetic shrines. The most famous were dedicated to Apollo

image9apollo.jpg

and were located (see map below—west to east)

image10map.png

at Delphi

image11delphi.jpg

Claros

image12claros.jpg

and Didyma.

image13didyma.JPG

There was also a well-known shrine dedicated to Zeus at Dodona,

image14do.jpg

but the oracle at Delphi was perhaps the most famous.

image15del.jpg

image16del.jpg

It’s not always clear how these places worked. The oracle at Dodona, for example, may have used two methods: sacred doves and the wind in the leaves of the enclosed grove you see in the picture. At Delphi, a pilgrim waited to pose a question to the priestess, called the “Pytho”

image17pythia.jpg

and, if she chose to respond, it was in the standard Greek epic metre, dactylic hexameter. Her answers were famously riddling and ambiguous, as when she told Croesus, the king of Lydia that, if he went to war with the Persians, a kingdom would fall (guess whose!).   To interpret such a response correctly would have taken King Galdaran’s response that, to interpret what his mirror told, one must have skill to decide just what the future might be.

When it comes to Galadrien/Galadriel, it’s not skill which she lacks, but rather she practices a kind of caution in interpretation:

“Many things I can command the Mirror to reveal…and to some I can show what they desire to see. But the Mirror will also show things unbidden, and those are often stranger and more profitable than things which we wish to behold. What you will see, if you leave the Mirror free to work, I cannot tell. For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that may yet be. But which it is that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

(We can’t resist a footnote here. In the early Greek poem, Theogony, the poet Hesiod tells us that he was a shepherd on a hillside when he was visited by the Muses, who told him that they could say many false things as if they were true, but could also speak the truth when they felt like it. They then gave him a staff and inspired him to make songs about things in the future, as well as things in the past, all of which sounds rather familiar here. Here’s a LINK if you’d like to read the story. And here’s a rather over-the-top painting by Gustave Moreau, (1826-1898.)

image18moreau.jpg

What Sam sees he finds deeply disturbing—the industrialization of the Shire—and it so disturbing that he leaps up and shouts that he must go home. What Frodo sees is more complex—perhaps Gandalf, what looks to be the arrival of the Numenorians to found Gondor, and, finally, the Eye, ever restless, ever searching.

So why is the Mirror here? We would suggest, tentatively, for several reasons:

  1. first, because this is a kind of turning point in the story: after the pursuit through Moria and the death of Gandalf (as far as the Fellowship knows), this is the first breathing space which the company has had and it’s a very safe and peaceful one—for the moment. As Celeborn says:

“Now is the time…when those who wish to continue the Quest must harden their hearts to leave this land. Those who no longer wish to go forward may remain here, for a while. But whether they stay or go, none can be sure of peace.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)

After so much struggle and the loss of a major figure, it’s clearly a good moment to rest, take stock, and look towards the future.

  1. second, Galadriel had earlier probed each of the company, testing their minds and finding out just who they were—sometimes to their discomfort, if not distress. Now the company is narrowed to just two: the ring-bearer and his servant, and here at her Mirror, she offers them a final test, but we can imagine that, unlike her earlier probing, this is much more free-form and ambiguous, as if she had allowed the two to make up their own tests. For Sam, it’s the possible ruination of what he loves most in the world, the Shire, and he almost fails, until Galadriel gently upbraids him:

“You did not wish to go home without your master before you looked in the Mirror, and yet you knew that evil things might well be happening in the Shire.”

Frodo’s test is less focused upon a place or event. Rather, it was a kind of suggestion of the past (Gondor), with the implication that that past’s continuation depends upon confronting the present danger, which is not to be underestimated. Galadriel’s words to Sam underline this:

“Remember that the Mirror shows many things, and not all have yet come to pass. Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions turn aside from their path to prevent them.”

Shaken, both pass the test, it seems.

  1. by implying that what Sam and Frodo see might actually happen, the author adds an extra note of urgency to the story, something always to be felt after that moment: the Shire could be in danger, Frodo may have to confront Sauron, directly or indirectly.

But you’ll notice that, taking Galadriel’s lead, we wrote “could be” and “may have to”, rather than “will be” and “must” and here we hear the voice of a wise person from another epic adventure.

image19starwars.jpg

image20yoda.jpg

Thanks, as always, for reading, and, as ever,

MTCIDC

CD

And Whither Then?

25 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Adrien Guignet, Aeneid, art, bibliomancy, Bilbo, Birth of Venus, Bouguereau, chimp painting, Chinese, critics, Cumae, Delphi, Etruscans, Frodo, future, Genesis, Greeks, Homer, Impressionism, It's a dangerous business going out your door, Joseph, Kansas City Royals, Monet, New York Mets, Oedipus, plastrons, prophetic, prophetic books, Pythia, Romans, Scapula, Sibyls, Sortes Tolkienses, Sortes Vergilianae, the Bible, The Lord of the Rings, The New Testament, Tolkien, Vergil, World Series, Zhang Dynasty

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your front door. You step onto the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 3)

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always. In this posting, we want to propose an aid for that dangerous business to which Frodo is referring when he quotes Bilbo.

The desire to know what will happen next makes for good novel readers—and writers—but it’s also an ancient human desire.

The Old Testament gives us a pharaoh with dreams, which Joseph interprets (Genesis 41-44) and which provides us with this splendid picture by Adrien Guignet (1816-1854).

Joseph Explaining the Dream to Pharoah, Jean Adrien Guignet

(This is an example of a whole world of painting which was devalued and declared stuffy and old-fashioned and pompous once Impressionism—which was originally mocked as just that, “impressions” rather than paintings—gained a foothold among art-buyers and the more progressive art critics. To us, although it may not have the wonderful fragmentations and color-freshness of those later painters, such older works have great importance historically—it’s the yin to the Impressionists’ yang, after all—and the over-the-top quality of some things—like this “Birth of Venus” by Bouguereau—1825-1905—has, we think, its own loopy charm.

The_Birth_of_Venus_by_William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(1879)

You see what we mean about yin/yang, however, when we compare it with this Monet, painted in the same year—1879. If you were brought up on academic painters like Bouguereau, Monet’s work must have looked like chimp paintings!

1vethe2

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The Chinese of the Zhang Dynasty (1500-1000BC) used turtle plastrons and cow shoulder blades to consult about the future.

Shang_dynasty_inscribed_tortoise_plastron

Shang_dynasty_inscribed_scapula

The Greeks had a number of prophetic sites, like Delphi, with its Pythia.

Pythia

And the Romans had several methods, beginning with what they inherited from their big brothers to the north, the Etruscans.

liver

And, yes, this is a sheep’s liver, done in bronze. What does it do? Lots of discussion about that! It appears to have gods and perhaps constellations, or at least the sky, involved. (For more and some useful references, google “liver of Piacenza”)

The Romans consulted the insides of selected animals

haruspex

and the flying patterns of birds

romrem

although this could lead to the occasional argument

romrem1

as well as their own counterpart to people like the Pythia at Delphi, the Sibyls. One Sibyl, who was reputed to live at Cumae, even had a collection of prophetic books which talked about the future.

CumaeanSibyl

Later Romans also consulted a particular book, Vergil’s Aeneid, the idea being that you would open the book (a scroll, early on, a book—a codex—in later imperial times), close your eyes, run your finger along the lines and stop—and the line your finger was on would tell you something about the future. This is a form of bibliomancy, or telling the future by using a book. Ancients might choose Homer, or, in this case, Vergil (the Aeneid) or, for the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Bible. If you use Vergil, the practice is called Sortes Vergilianae (“Vergilian lots”—that is to say, not building sites—although one could build an interpretation upon one—but things used to determine the fate of something).

Today, we, as Tolkien fans, propose to add another text, suggesting Sortes Tolkienses (SOR-tes tol-kee-EN-ses). Pick up your copy of The Lord of the Rings, and ask it a question. Then close your eyes, open the book (make sure that it is rightsideup before you do this—although perhaps upsidedown would provide a greater-yet feel of randomness), run your index finger down the page, stop, open eyes, and read.

For our first try, we asked it who would win this year’s World Series, the New York Mets or the Kansas City Royals.

Hmm. Page 351 of the 2004 HarperCollins edition.

“…Frodo felt that he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness.”

Well, this is the 111th World Series—that would certainly suggest a kind of timelessness, we supposed. Then there was that business about not fading or changing—which team had won the Series last? A quick flick through statistics gave us the Royals in 1985 and the Mets in 1986. Okay. Does that mean that, since the Mets won more recently, that wouldn’t change?

Should we try again? Influenced by the rash Oedipus, asking the Pythia only one question and not pausing for clarification, we decided that it meant the Mets.

But then the Royals won.

So, we leave it to you, dear readers. You consult the Sortes Tolkienses—just make sure that the course of your life—or your team—doesn’t depend upon it!

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

PS

There is a very entertaining experiment with the more established Sortes Vergilianae to be found by googling timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2012/03/sortes-virgilianae.html—an essay by the ever-lively Mary Beard.

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