As a pre-cursor to our trip to Greece I have been researching two aspects of energy forms that keep arising in works that I read, often seemingly un-related to the main topic. Those forms are some very early archetypes of the Male and Female earth energies – namely Typhon and Delphine.
Typhon was created by the union of Ouranos and Gaea. Ouranos is seen as the Sky Father, and Gaea as the Earth Mother. We have already encountered a site dedicated to this energy form: Tyfos circle in North Wales.
Now we are about to visit Delphi, where Delphine is the female counterpart to this energy. She is the dragoness that actuated The Oracle of Delphi. Her name signifies “womb” and she is associated with the bowels of the Earth and its prophetic forces, which were always rumoured to be gases escaping from the depths of the earth. These vapours were supposed to have a hypnotic effect on the Sybilline Oracles, and gave them the power of prophetic vision and pronouncement.
“A monster in the form of a serpent-tailed. Dragon-woman. Sister of Typhon. She was the guardian of the Corycian Cave where Typhon hid the sinews he cut from the body of Zeus when they fought. In another story, until it was driven out by Apollo, the dragon was the originator of the revelations that inspired the Pythia to make her pronouncements. Some say she is the same as Echidna. Occasionally called Delphine, Delphyne, Echidna, Echidne, Ekhidna or ‘snake’.” (source: Mythology Dictionary)
Linked with the constellation of Delphinus (The Dolphin)
“This earliest oracle [at Delphi] was protected by a horrible dragon named Delphyne or Python, who was devastating the countryside. When Apollo was still very young, he slew the dragon, claimed the oracle for himself and established funerary games (the Pythian Games) in order to appease the dead monster’s spirit. He dedicated one of his symbols—a three-legged stool called a tripod—to the shrine and installed his own priestess, the Pythia, upon it. According to tradition, the Pythia was seated in the midst of vapours billowing from the earth beneath her tripod, seated in a trancelike state induced by the mists and by chewing laurel leaves, babbling her incoherent prophecies that were then translated into Homeric hexameter by a priest [1]. From her sometimes garbled muttering, the priest would translate into hexameter verse. The Pythia never gave a straight answer…” [Delphi by Ron Leadbetter].
Yet again we have the solar hero slaying the female dragon form.
“Delphinus lies east of Aquila, on the edge of the Milky Way, occupying, with the adjoining aqueous figures, the portion of the sky that Aratos called the Water. It culminates about the 15th of September.” (source: Constellation of Words)
Well, we will be going there in February, when the sites are just beginning to spring to life. Once again we are being drawn towards a primal earth energy site, a site of a powerful ley line, and a site associated with divination. Let’s see if I get to meet with Pythia, and to work with the powers of the Oracle of Delphi.
