John Opsopaus - The oracles of Apollo: practical ancient Greek divination for today

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

The Oracles of Apollo: Practical Ancient Greek Divination for Today 2017 by John Opsopaus, PhD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the authors copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

First e-book edition 2017

E-book ISBN: 9780738752259

Cover design by Kevin R. Brown

Interior art and photos provided by the author

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Opsopaus, John, author.

Title: The oracles of Apollo : practical ancient Greek divination for today /

John Opsopaus, PhD.

Description: First edition. | Woodbury : Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd, 2017. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017009345 (print) | LCCN 2017021001 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738752259 (ebook) | ISBN 9780738751979 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Divination--Greece--History--To 1500.

Classification: LCC BF1765 (ebook) | LCC BF1765 .O87 2017 (print) | DDC

133.30938--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009345

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publishers website for links to current author websites.

Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

Acknowledgments

It is a pleasure to be able to thank those who have facilitated the production of this book. First, Im grateful to the many people who, over the past twenty years since I first put my translations of the Alphabet Oracle and the Counsels of the Seven Sages online, have urged me to provide more information and have told me how valuable these texts have been to them. Second, Im grateful to Llewellyn Worldwide and their support for this project. In particular, Elysia Gallo, Senior Acquisitions Editor, made many suggestions that have improved immeasurably the content and readability of this book, and the production editor, Stephanie Finne, edited the manuscript closely, catching errors and improving consistency and organization. It is always a pleasure to work with the dedicated and professional Llewellyn staff.

Contents

. Ancient Greek Divination

: What You Will Learn

: Divination in the Ancient World

: Rituals

. The Alphabet Oracle

: Introduction to the Alphabet Oracle

: Consulting the Alphabet Oracle

: The Esoteric Greek Alphabet

: Text of the Alphabet Oracle

. The Oracle of the Seven Sages

: The Counsels of the Seven Sages

: Consulting the Seven Sages

: The Oracle of the Seven Sages

: Glossary

: Probabilities

Part I

Ancient Greek Divination

Chapter 1

What You Will Learn

Only sacred divination united with the gods truly gives a share in the divine life, participating in foreknowledge and divine thoughts, and truly makes us divine. This was written by Iamblichus (ca. 250ca. 330 CE), a Pagan philosopher and teacher of theurgy (the art of communicating with gods). He also tells us that the Pythagoreansthe ancient Pagan masters of magic and the Mysteriesconsidered divination (along with medicine and music) the highest among the sciences, for divination alone is the means of interpreting the intentions of the gods.

Since ancient times, divination has been an important tool for seeking guidance from the gods, and most modern Pagans, Wiccans, and others who practice the old faiths are familiar with divination and many practice some divinatory art, such as tarot, runes, I Ching, or scrying. In restoring the faiths of our ancient ancestors, we would like to understand the arts by which they sought divine guidance. Unfortunately, there is little documentation to guide us. Although there are legends of the tarots origin in ancient Egypt, history traces it back to a fifteenth-century Italian card game, and its documented use for divination is no older than the late eighteenth century. The runes indeed date from our Pagan past, but we do not have documentation of how they were used for divination in ancient times. Of course older is not necessarily better, and new divinatory arts can be developed. Esoteric, Neopagan, and Wiccan tarots have been developed (including my own Pythagorean Tarot ), which work well for us. Nevertheless, we would like to understand divination as it was practiced by our Pagan predecessors.

This was my motivation more than twenty years ago when I made the first English translation of the ancient Greek Alphabet Oracle and made it available on the Internet. Although I had practiced magic since the 1960s and studied Ancient Greek in college so that I could read ancient mythology, literature, and philosophy, it was in the 1980s that I realized it was the Greek gods who spoke most clearly to me. At that time there were few groups practicing Hellenic Neopaganism, and so it was difficult to organize group rituals. Therefore, in 1995 I founded the Omphalos, a networking group for Greek and Roman Neopagans, which was listed in the Circle Guide to Pagan Groups from 1997 onward. This was in the early days of the Internet, and so contact information was distributed on paper through the post office! As more people got online in the 1990s, I moved operations to the Internet and established the Stl , the homepage for the Omphalos (still online, but not actively maintained).

At that time, many devotees of the Greek gods were practicing Wicca with Greek god names, but I was interested in practicing in the ancient way established by our Pagan forebearers (with, of course, some adaptations for the world today). There was little available of a practical nature, so I began doing research into ancient practices and adapting them for contemporary use. I made these rituals, developed by myself and other Pagans, available with other information on the Stl .