The 'Oracle Octave': The Geodetic
placement of Oracle centres.
Livvio
Stecchini suggested that certain ancient oracle centres
were placed according to geodetic principles at which 'Omphalus' or 'Navel
stones' were placed.
This idea is supported by the historical narratives of
Herodotus, who wrote that the oracle centre of Amon in Libya was founded by
flying doves from Thebes, which was long considered the geodetic centre of
ancient Egypt, and is located 2/7ths of the distance from the equator to the
North pole (and at which an Omphalus was later discovered). Herodotus also
wrote that the oracle centre at
Dodona was
said to have been founded by Egyptian priestesses from
Thebes and that doves
flew between the two sites.
A
milestone of literature on the subject of the geodetic placement
of oracle centres already exists, written by Livio Stecchini
(27),
who concluded that several ancient oracle centres in the
Mediterranean and Middle-east, were deliberately placed along
specific latitudes and separated by units of 1°, which he
suggested composed an 'oracle octave', along which the
seven major centres were placed, each devoted to one of the
seven known planets and symbolised by different sacred trees
(for more on this subject refer to the 'Tree alphabet' in
R. Greave's book, 'The White Goddess'). Underlying this
geodetic placement, he believed was a set of knowledge that that
formed the basis of the 'Eleusian
mysteries'. Much of the following work should be credited to
Stecchini.
Stecchini said this
about the subject:-
‘The Temple of Ammon at Thebes at latitude 25° 43’ N was considered, and
is, located at 2/7 of the distance between the Equator and the pole.
Ancient geographers divided the space between the Equator and the Pole
into 7 zones. Egyptologists have vainly tried to explain why the Greeks
gave the name of Thebai to the city called Wast by the Egyptians; the
explanation is provided by the Hebrew word thibbun meaning “navel”. From
the Bible (Jud. 9:37) we learn that “a navel of the earth” was located at
Mt. Gerizim where there was originally the sacred center of the Hebrews
before it was moved to Jerusalem; the Samaritans never accepted such a
shift, and geographically they were right, since the claim of Jerusalem to
be the navel of the earth was not correct. The eastern gate of the
Second
Temple, where the standards of length were located,
was called Gate of
Susa, but
Susa was located at the latitude of
Mt.
Gerizim which is 32° 11’ N. The sanctuary of
Mt.
Gerizim was located at a latitude that is 2½ sevenths
from the Equator. Egyptian benchmarks had the shape of the “navel” found
at the
Temple of
Delphoi in
Greece. These “navels” had the shape of a hemisphere
with the meridians and parallels marked upon them; at times they are half
a sphere and at times they are elongated at the Pole. The sanctuary of
Delphoi was considered a “navel of the earth,” as being located at 3/7 of
the distance from the Equator to the Pole. This would correspond to a
latitude 38° 34’ N; the Temple of Delphoi is actually located at a
latitude 38° 29’ N, … which makes it 6° to the North of one of two
Egyptian anchor points, the original apex of the Nile Delta at latitude
30° 05’ N on the axis of Egypt which is 31° 13’ E. Susa was computed as
being 17° to the East of this point; it is at latitude 48° 15’ E. When the
Assyrians established their religious capital at
Nimrud in 875 B.C. they chose a point that was 6° to
the North and 12° to the East of this Egyptian anchor point. (ref)
Stecchini's theory
was later included as a part of R. Temples book 'The Sirius mystery',
in which he suggested that the distribution of oracle centres embodied an
ancient knowledge which had been stored in myth and tradition.
Significantly, he states that the pre-dynastic capital of Egypt, Behdet 'existed
before 3,200 BC', and was replaced by the city Canopus, (The same
name as the star that represents the 'rudder' of the constellation Argo).
He suggested that this was the key to the connection between the two
mythological narratives of the ‘Ark’ of the Hebrews and the ‘Argo’
of the Argonauts, which he believed, revealed evidence of a prehistoric
system which included an understanding of astronomy mathematics and
geo-metry (as in the sense of measuring the earth).
We shall not focus
on his work overly as it has already been done, but rather, by taking his
lead, have a closer look at the two most famous Greek oracle centres,
namely the first ever oracle at Dodona, and
the most famous one at Delphi to see if
they might have been situated specifically, and according to geodetic
principles:
The importance of
the oracles to the ancient Greeks is apparent from their prominence in
mythological and historical texts; however, they were never exclusive to
Greece, nor did they originate there, having been clearly recorded as an
Egyptian introduction. Herodotus repeated what he was told by the
priestesses of Dodona, the first Greek oracle, concerning its
introduction:
‘Two black doves
flew away from Egyptian Thebes, and while one directed its flight to
Libya, the other came to them. She alighted on an oak, and sitting there
began to speak with a human voice, and told them that on that spot where
she was, there should thenceforth be an oracle of Jove (Zeus). They
understood the announcement to be from Heaven, so they set to work at once
and erected a shrine. The dove that flew to Libya bade the Libyans to
establish there the oracle of Ammon (Amon).’
(Herodotus II, 53-5).
In Egypt however,
Herodotus was given a different version of the legend. The priests of
Jupiter (Amon) at Thebes said:
‘Two of the sacred
women were once carried off from Thebes by the Phoenicians. The story went
that one of them was sold into Libya, and the other into Greece, and these
women were the first founders of the oracles of the two countries’
Regardless in the
differences between versions, the concept of the oracle (otherwise named ‘sacred
women’, Sybil’s or Pythona’s); perhaps found easy favour
in Greece through their close affinity to the already extant and universal
mother-earth-goddess cults in the Mediterranean and beyond. So strong are
the similarities between the two, that an earlier connection between
cultures can be easily inferred. The pictures below illustrates how the
peculiar mixture of symbolism was already present in Greece long before
the arrival of the Egyptian oracles.
(Cretan goddess with
snakes in hand and dove on head)…
Mackenzie (24) had
the following to say concerning the subject of the Minoan mother-goddess
worship before the advent of the Egyptian pantheon:
In Crete there were
three outstanding forms of the mother-goddess – the snake-goddess,
the dove-goddess, and the “lady of the wild creatures” … As in
Egypt, and Babylonia, it is found that one goddess tends to absorb the
attributes of the other’
The similarities
between the Cretan, Egyptian, Babylonian mother-goddess find parallels in
several other primitive cultures from the same time. It is interesting to
note that on pre-Hellenic Crete, she was depicted in a strikingly similar
way to the Babylonian Ishtar, and is flanked by felines (as seen at
Malta and Metsamor:
Right). Mackenzie goes on to say:
‘The great goddess
was depicted wearing a flounced gown suspended from her slim waist, round
which a girdle is clasped. The upper part of the body is bare, and she has
enormous breasts. Sometimes she stands on a mountain top, guarded by
two lions’. (24)
(More about
the Earth-mother goddess)
We are
told by Larousse that: ‘Cretan iconography is associated with the
survival of the Neolithic mother goddess, symbol of fertility with her
bare breasts, the serpent, the bull’s horns, which recur in the
architecture, and the bird, which precedes the dove of Aphrodite’. We
can see that all of these icons are repeated in the set of myths
surrounding the oracle centres, which are later imported from Egypt, and
which relate to a deeper set of myths with only a trace of memory in
them.
Herodotus noted the religious transference from the earlier
earth-mother-goddess to a pantheon of gods between Greece and Egypt, at
the same time confirming the status of Dodona as the first Greek oracle
site, and places the existence of oracles before the gods. He said:
‘After
a long lapse of time the names of the gods came to Greece from Egypt… not
long after the arrival of the names, they sent to consult the oracle at
Dodona about them. This is the most ancient oracle in Greece, and at that
time there was no other.’ (24)
In addition to
having been recorded as the first Greek oracle centre, Dodona has a still
greater, and older claim to fame being located at the foot of Mount
Tomaros, which is named in Greek myth as the refuge for Deucalion and his
wife, the sole survivors of the great ‘flood of Deucalion’. It is
within this myth that an older, perhaps hidden significance (and
connection), can be found in the location of Dodona, for while Mt. Tomaros
is the reputed resting place of the Greek ark, the Hebrews record the
final resting place of their ark as being on
 Mount
Ararat in Turkey (near Metsamor), both of which sit on the same latitude as
Dodona and happen to be equidistant from Thebes, so that the three
locations form an almost perfect equilateral triangle. It is also
interesting to note the location of the 30th parallel in
connection to this triangle, as it runs across it a third of the way its
height.
Having already seen
that certain prominent sacred sites from Northern (Lower) Egypt share a
geometric and geodetic connection with the region of Mount Ararat, we can
see now that Thebes, the geodetic centre of Southern (Upper) Egypt, also
shares a similar relationship. The accuracy between the locations of these
three important sites lends favour to Stecchini’s suggestion of a
deliberate placement of ancient oracle centres. It is also apparent that
as well as having a geometric relationship, a geodetic one can be seen at
both Egyptian sites (namely, Heliopolis being on the 30th
parallel in the North, and Thebes being located exactly 2/7th’s
of the distance from the Equator to the North pole).
While it is possible
that such a geometric connection between sites may be a coincidence, the
earlier mythological connections (of earth-mother and ark) are harder to
explain. It is not possible to know if the significance of the site was
already known to the Egyptian priests at Thebes (or Phoenicians) when the
oracle at Dodona was established, but there is little doubt that the
location had a special significance from before the arrival of the
Egyptian oracles.
 As
if to confirm that the placement of sacred sites was ordained through
geodetic principles, a look at the most famous of all Greek oracle centres
brings us to Delphi which contains a tradition of geodesy in
its origin myth, which says that it was located by Zeus who released two
birds from the eastern and western ends of the earth, with the point where
they flew past each other being considered the centre of the world and
therefore marked with an omphalus stone. As well as being located almost
exactly one degree south of Dodona, it also happens to be placed 3/7th’s
of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. Delphi also lies along
the same alignment formed by connecting Dodona to Behdet in Egypt (which
was the geodetic capital of Northern Egypt before 3,000 BC according to
Stecchini), and which sits at the same Latitude as Alexandria. It is
noticeable that as well as forming an alignment, these three oracle sites
are separated by almost exact degrees of latitude (based on a division of
360).
Dodona (39° 30'
N. 20° 51' E)
Delphi (38° 29'
N, 22° 26' E)
Behdet (31° 30'
N, 31° 14' E)
The oracle centre at
Delos also had an omphalus (with a serpent wrapped round it), and we can
see that it too was located almost exactly one degree south of Delphi.
Delos – (37°
26’ N,
25° 17’ E)
It is sufficient for present to demonstrate the strength of
the connection between the regions of Mt. Ararat and that of Dodona, both
sharing the same mythological ‘fingerprint’, both on the same latitude,
and both equally distanced from Thebes, the ancient navel of Egypt.
However, it is clear from Santillana’s work that there is evidence of a
complex set of traditions involving the following themes: navel-stones,
Geometry and Astronomy in some way related to a flood event.
We have also seen
that the two sites for the landing of the ark are geometrically connected;
this reference to the ark leads us neatly to the aspect of
Navel-stones,
which were famously found at both Thebes in Egypt and at Delphi. In order
to understand the significance of the oracle centres it has been necessary
to look at the myths that surround them, this proves to be the case with
the Omphalii too.
(Return
to top) |
The
Oracles
- 
