The Obsolescence of Oracles

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

I'll put the search strings in bold, these are the beginning of a quote, and the link(s), the ulr(s), which are highlighted too, will be the quote(s) end(s)...


The Obsolescence of Oracles

"These matters," I added, "I urge upon you for your frequent consideration, as well as my own, in the belief that they contain much to which objections might be made, and many suggestions looking to a contrary conclusion, all of which the present occasion does not allow us to follow out. So let them be postponed until another time, and likewise the question which Philip raises about the Sun and Apollo."



De Defectu Oraculorum
(Περὶ τῶν Ἐκλελοιπότων Χρηστηρίων)
by
Plutarch
as published in Vol. V
of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1936

    

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_defectu_oraculorum*.html

This bit of Plutarch's writing has many curios!...and I've been puzzling over them for weeks now...I happened on it as it is the context of 'the god Pan is dead' quote (see Pan post)...

Plutarch reaches for an explanation of things, not just oracles and what happened to them, in this fashion...our eyes need light, and light needs our eyes...and light being from the sun, and Apollo is associated with the sun, and they combine together...I think I have it right, that without the Sun, there's no Apollo, and without Apollo, there's no Sun...

Apollo Sun

Hence many among earlier generations regarded Apollo and the Sun as one and the same god; but those who understood and respected fair and wise analogy conjectured that as body is to soul, vision to intellect, and light to truth, so is the power of the sun to the nature of Apollo; and they would make it appear that the sun is his offspring and progeny, being for ever born of him that is for ever. For the sun kindles and promotes and helps to keep in activity the power of vision in our perceptive sense, just as the god does for the power of prophecy in the soul.

same site

Oh, one has to read the whole thing, and what Plutarch suggests in his lament that Oracles are fading...he was a priest at Delphi...is that the Oracle sites were like lyres, they could be moved to prophecy when played by a wind, but without the wind, they would be silent...much as one doesn't see when there is no light around...

quote

Let this statement be ventured by us, following the lead of many others before us, that coincidently with the total defection of the guardian spirits assigned to the oracles and prophetic shrines, occurs the defection of the oracles themselves; and when the spirits flee or go to another place, the oracles themselves lose their power, but when the spirits return many years later, the oracles, like musical instruments, become articulate, since those who can put them to use are present and in charge of them."

same site

end quote

Plutarch didn't like the Epicureans, the Atheist of the time, though he admired their study and reporting of the Natural world...the Epicureans discounted the possibility of gods and goddesses...'no proof!' as it were...Plutarch tries to fit it all together, gods and goddesses with observed Nature...or maybe that's just me!...

Plutarch is going on about what is Mortal, Natural, Matter, and what is Immortal, Divine, Spiritural...in my reading, and it's in a quote in a few posts back, I happened on the notion that Jesus was 100 % Mortal, or Human, and 100% Immortal, God Himself...

Robert Graves in the White Goddess laments the passing of goddesses and gods, and the book, when it came out, 1948, it kind of struck a nerve, and became popular, but his whole notion wasn't anything new, the ancients themselves, Plutarch in this writing, were taking note of the passing of gods and goddesses...it's a sentimentality for lost times, which I suppose every 'modern' era has...when Plutarch wrote, the Pyramids were already like two thousand years old...he had his 'ancients' too!

more curios to come from Plutarch!

DavidDavid