Quotes:Pythia

H. P. Blavatsky

Pythia. Modern dictionaries inform us that the term means one who delivered the oracles at the temple of Delphi, and “any female supposed to have the spirit of divination in her — a witch” (Webster). This is neither true, just nor correct. On the authority of Iamblichus, Plutarch and others, a Pythia was a priestess chosen among the sensitives of the poorer classes, and placed in a temple where oracular powers were exercised. There she had a room secluded from all but the chief Hierophant and Seer, and once admitted, was, like a nun, lost to the world. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the ground, through which arose intoxicating vapours, these subterranean exhalations, penetrating her whole system, produced the prophetic mania, in which abnormal state she delivered oracles. Aristophanes in Væstas “ I., reg. 28, calls the Pythia ventriloqua vates or the “ventriloquial prophetess”, on account of her stomach‐ voice. The ancients placed the soul of man (the lower Manas) or his personal self‐consciousness, in the pit of his stomach. We find in the fourth verse of the second Nâbhânedishta hymn of the Brahmans: “Hear, O sons of the gods, one who speaks through his name (nâbhâ), for he hails you in your dwellings!” This is a modern somnambulic phenomenon. The navel was regarded in antiquity as “the circle of the sun”, the seat of divine internal light. Therefore was the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the city of Delphus, the womb or abdomen — while the seat of the temple was called the omphalos, navel. As well‐known, a number of mesmerized subjects can read letters, hear, smell and see through that part of their body. In India there exists to this day a belief (also among the Parsis) that adepts have flames in their navels, which enlighten for them all darkness and unveil the spiritual world. It is called with the Zoroastrians the lamp of Deshtur or the “High Priest”; and the light or radiance of the Dikshita (the initiate) with the Hindus.

Source: H. P. Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary, art. Pythia