Delphi

(Image: From Nigel Pennick, "Secret Games of the Gods," Pythia, c. 400 BCE. Notice the 3x3 checkered board motif in the border, that dates back to at least 6,000 BCE in the lands around the Mediterranean. The "roof" of the embrasure where the Pythia is installed is also checked, perhaps replicating the older checkerboard-patterned palenques for deceased kings and special warriors used in archaic Greece and, even earlier, the checkered ceilings of the enclosures holding the mummies of ancient pharaohs. Notice also the eight-pointed "rosette" on the side of the Pythia's stool, which I assume is matched by another on the other side. The 8-point rosette is long associated with the goddess Inanna, who travelled to the Land of No Return and entered the underworld to retrieve her deceased lover/son, and successfully returned. The Pythia holds a shallow bowl or dish in her left hand and an oracle branch in her right hand. The holding of the dish or bowl in her left hand is significant. In "Christian" times, left-handed people, particularly females who were left-handed, were often persecuted and/or killed as "witches.") A selection from Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Legends." Delphi "Womb"; Greece's oldest, most famous oracle, where Mother Earth was worshipped under the name of Delphyne, the Womb of Creation, along with her serpent-son and consort Python.(1) At various times the oracle was said to belong to the Sea-goddess, or the Moon-goddess, various designations of the same primal Mother, whoses priestess-daughters, the Pythonesses, controlled the rites. Eventually the patriarchal god Apollo took it over, retaining the Pythonesses, but claiming to have placed the serpent in his underground uterine cave, whence came the oracle's inspiration. Apollo murdered the priestess Delphyne, and held the oracle until it was closed by the Christian emperor Thedosius. After him, Arcadius had the temple entirely destroyed. Notes: (1) Graves, G.M., 1, 80.

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Compare to this information from Wikipedia entry on Delphi: The name Delphois starts with the same four letters as δελφύς delphus, "womb" and may indicate archaic veneration of Gaia, Grandmother Earth, and the Earth Goddess at the site.[4][5] Apollo is connected with the site by his epithet Δελφίνιος Delphinios, "the Delphinian." The epithet is connected with dolphins (Greek δελφίς,-ῖνος) in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (line 400), recounting the legend of how Apollo first came to Delphi in the shape of a dolphin, carrying Cretan priests on his back. The Homeric name of the oracle is Pytho (Πυθώ).[6] Notes 4, 5 and 6 (referenced above): (4) Fontenrose, Joseph, The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations, with a Catalogue of Responses (1978). pp.3-4. "Such was its prestige that most Hellenes after 500 B.C. placed its foundation in the earliest days of the world: before Apollo took possession, they said, Ge (Earth) [Gaia] and her daughter Themis had spoken oracles at Pytho. Such has been the strength of the tradition that many historians and others have accepted as historical fact the ancient statement that Ge and Themis spoke oracles before it became Apollo's establishment. Yet nothing but the myth supports this statement. In the earliest account that we have of the Delphic Oracle's beginnings, the story found in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (281-374), there was no Oracle before Apollo came and killed the great she-dragon, Pytho's only inhabitant. This was apparently the Delphic myth of the sixth century". (5) Farnell, Lewis Richard, The Cults of the Greek States, v.III, pp.8-10, onwards. "The earth is the abode of the dead, therefore the earth-deity has power over the ghostly world: the shapes of dreams, which often foreshadowed the future, were supposed to ascend from the world below, therefore the earth-deity might acquire an oracular function, especially through the process of incubation, in which the consultant slept in a holy shrine with his ear upon the ground. That such conceptions attached to Gaia is shown by the records of her cults at Delphi, Athens, and Aegae. A recently discovered inscription speaks of a temple of Ge [Gaia] at Delphi. ... As regards Gaia, we also can accept it. It is confirmed by certain features in the latter Delphic divination, and also by the story of the Python." (6) Odyssey, VIII, 80 The legend about Apollo assuming the shape of a dolphin carrying Cretan priests on his back is a classic gloss of patriarchal take-over of a goddess shrine - blatant, actually! I don't think I've read a clearer example of this type of masculine glossing over of older matriarchal and/or goddess-oriented myths. Foreign invaders brought their alien war-gods with them, and took over what was there before. Sadly, a story oft-told throughout history. Today we call it propaganda.