The Mystery of the Delphi Oracle | National Geographic

here the story goes Oedipus first
learned his fate the Oracle of Delphi
speaking for the god Apollo told him he
would kill his father and marry his
mother as many of us learned in school
despite all his efforts Oedipus was
unable to escape his disastrous destiny
in maybe the most famous of Greek
tragedies in antiquity just like today
people had a lot of uncertainties in
life and they presume that the gods knew
more than they did and in particular
they thought Apollo knew a lot so they
would travel here basically to ask
Apollo for advice or to ask him
questions and hope that he’d give an
answer if Apollo was a musician than his
priestess the Pythia was his instrument
ancient records tell of mystical
sweet-smelling vapors rising from the
earth putting a Pythia under Apollo
spell but while the reciting of
prophesies is historical fact questions
about those vapors remaining brain area
on geological map archaeologist John
Hale believes the answers lie deep
underground analysis of the bedrock
beneath the temple also shows the
existence of Petro chemicals including
ethylene ethylene has been used as an
anesthetic in modern days but when
administered in experimental small doses
induced a trance-like state and the
trance state had a lot of similarities
with the description of the Pythia there
in the temple of Delphine scholars think
water running underground could have
carried gases up through the fault lines
directly to the priestess
the ancients believed ordinary people
could meet the gods at Delphi a point of
contact between man and mystery in a way
they were right
modern science suggests that here the
supernatural was in fact simply natural