The Oracle

It’s the beginning of February, a cold winter’s morning in a cloudy valley. I breathe in the crisp mountain air as I walk in the footsteps of ancient pilgrims. Above my head, Parnassus peaks loom white, the sacred home of the Muses. The road to the Orcale unfolds through a calm silver sea of over a million ancient olive trees, their trunks gnarled and twisted by time— astonishing three thousand years of constant cultivation. People walked this path, lived their lives under these branches.

I pass the sacred spring of Delphi and there it is. A shock of yellow. Flowers, carpeting the ground among the marble columns and walls. And the trees, blush pink with blossom. This place, built upon the earth's fault lines, feels like Persephone's gate from Hades, a vibrant eruption of spring into the world. I’m fascinated by this unique climate and geology where hot gases used to rise to the surface. The very air Pythia - the Oracle breathed, chewing on laurel leaves, falling into her trance. 

Up I go. This path, once alive with processions. Now, just marble and granite. But underneath? Something older. A prehistoric cult site of Mother Earth. I like that. It feels right. We know so little of Delphi's earliest days. Later legends tell of Apollo arriving and slaying Python - Gaia’s child, guardian of the sacred spring. Taking the site for his own temple. But the women, the oracles… they were here long before him and they stayed. Only the temple rose, a monument to Apollo. And with it, the priests' power. Pythia, silenced, hidden in the shadows.

I stop beside the unassuming knee-high, egg-shaped rock with a flat base. The Omphalos. "World's Navel" in Greek. Dropped by Zeus to mark the centre of the world. As it strikes me: this place, the heart of myth, legend, and history. For a thousand years, the center of the world. No decision of any consequence in the Roman Empire without consulting the oracle's wisdom. A canny operation. Power, built on information. Forecasts, not whispered on ethereal vapors, but carefully researched. A treasury of Athenians and other cities, their gifts piling up. A network of informants stretched across the empire. Apollo’s gift - not magic fortunetelling, but a clear informed sight. The priests worked their connections, gathering whispers and turning them into oracles. 

Once the heart of everything, now a ruin. Rome fell and Delphi, its voice once so strong, grew silent. But the engine persists. The relentless flow of information, of influence, across continents. It's the same current that flows through our own time – it's so familiar. So utterly now. I came to Delphi for the romance of the ancient times. What I found, though, was a mirror. A reflection of our own world. Influence, money, power. Forged in the fires of information. A truth as old as time.