What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi? | Hacker News Reader

What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi?

dynomight.net

151 pointsmediocregopher163 comments

> Moreover, ethylene in the concentrations that cause trances is extremely flammable, and there’s no historical record of any explosions or fires.

That doesn't seem to be true. Herodotus 2.180:

"When the Amphictyons paid three hundred talents to have the temple that now stands at Delphi finished (as that which was formerly there burnt down by accident), it was the Delphians' lot to pay a fourth of the cost." [1]

I'm not a student of the Classics so I can't verify from the original. This source [2] seems to imply that the world choice implies as if the place burnt down on its own.

1: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...

2: https://erenow.net/ancient/delphi-a-history-of-the-center-of...

With apologies for hastiness, rushed day -

Greek: "ὁ γὰρ πρότερον ἐὼν αὐτόθι αὐτόματος κατεκάη"

(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...)

Literal translation: "because the one [= the temple] that previously existed in the same place completely burned down on its own"

The crux here is on "αὐτόματος", for which see LSJ: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=au%29to%2Fmatos&...

I know barely enough Greek to sound it out, but "αὐτόματος" is "automatos", which probably gives enough information to anyone not interested in following the link.

"There is no historical record of..." is an interesting assertion. On the one hand, it's easy to make and sort of requires no citation because there wouldn't be one. "There is no historical record of Caesar's fondness for juggling." But on the other hand, it's a dangerous claim because it's extremely falsifiable, like in your example. But I suppose it's easy to say "whoops, I read all of the historical records but forgot about Histories book 2, good find!"

A stronger claim is to limit yourself to some sources: "There is no record of X in A's history of B or C's history of D." If you read the sources it is unlikely to be falsified, and the reader who wants to debate you at least knows where not to look.

> But on the other hand, it's a dangerous claim because it's extremely falsifiable, like in your example.

Making claims that are easy to falsify is good!

“There is no historical record of the deliberate use of psilocybin mushrooms in Europe before 1957”

I had to make this claim recently. There is also a shocking lack of evidence for the use of cannabis in the Greco-Roman period (apart from Herodotus discussing the Scythians—and a reference in Exodus).

I am curious. How does one investigate such a claim? I imagine general expertise in the subject is a big start, and perhaps some sort of electronic search for certain keywords in some sort of historical records database (I assume there are such things?), but beyond that, it seems challenging. And then how does one demonstrate that such a search was conducted?

Here’s an example wrt cannabis: https://saltonverde.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/17-Handbo...

Nice. Also this article seems to conflate the ethylene concentration in water with that in air.

The final point about positivism is important. Geeks love naturalistic explanations of mythological ideas, however far fetched. Trolls are really cultural memory of Neanderthals. Dragons are dinosaurs. The witch craze was due to ergot poisoning etc.

If anyone is interested in what actual historians think about such theories, read for example this: https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/06/delphic-oracle.ht... Tl/dr: The oracle speaking cryptic prophetic verses from a trance is a literary construction. So the ethylene theory is a trying to provide a naturalistic explanation for a fiction.

I completely misread this as

> Greeks love naturalistic explanations of mythological ideas, however far fetched.

And wonder whether this is also broadly, historically true?

The Greek philosopher Euhemerus believed that Gods has originated as humans who was worshiped after their death. So the naturalistic explanations existed, although I don't know how widely accepted they were.

There seems to have been Greeks like Thucydides who did like that and Greeks like Herodotus who enjoyed the opposite (supernatural explanations of the natural), I wouldn't know enough to make a general claim.

How can dragons be memories of dinosaurs? Or do you think some skeletons were found?

Quick quote from Wikipedia (via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon#Myth_origins): "In her book The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times (2000), Adrienne Mayor argues that some stories of dragons may have been inspired by ancient discoveries of fossils belonging to dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.[19] She argues that the dragon lore of northern India may have been inspired by "observations of oversized, extraordinary bones in the fossilbeds of the Siwalik Hills below the Himalayas"[20] and that ancient Greek artistic depictions of the Monster of Troy may have been influenced by fossils of Samotherium, an extinct species of giraffe whose fossils are common in the Mediterranean region.[20] In China, a region where fossils of large prehistoric animals are common, these remains are frequently identified as "dragon bones"[21] and are commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine.[21] Mayor, however, is careful to point out that not all stories of dragons and giants are inspired by fossils[21] and notes that Scandinavia has many stories of dragons and sea monsters, but has long "been considered barren of large fossils."[21] In one of her later books, she states that "Many dragon images around the world were based on folk knowledge or exaggerations of living reptiles, such as Komodo dragons, Gila monsters, iguanas, alligators, or, in California, alligator lizards, though this still fails to account for the Scandinavian legends, as no such animals (historical or otherwise) have ever been found in this region."[22]"

In summary, a historian argues that some, but not all, societies found the fossils of reptiles, and created myths involving dragons using these fossils as inspirations for the dragons' imagery.

I'm not sure why Scandinavians would need the fossils in their corner of the earth to support this. The stories could have travelled from other parts of the world.

The identification of dinosaurs as dragons is a common theory but I believe the historical evidence for it is extremely sparse. Still, it is really strange to me that dinosaur bones were only officially discovered in 1841.

> Still, it is really strange to me that dinosaur bones were only officially discovered in 1841.

Isn’t this a bit like how America was only officially “discovered” in 1492? To the general surprise of everyone already living there :)

There are descriptions from the 4th century China which can be read to imply that they found dinosaur bones. The area indicated by these writings is known in the present to have such fossils.

Can we say for certain that what they had were dinosaur bones? No, of course not. They didn’t describe their findings in detail and the actual bones were lost since then.

Often 'discovered' in this context means 'popularized' or 'made known' to the audience in question. Not neccessarly the very first human who found it

I'm not sure it's really that similar; the word "officially" here is meaning something along the lines of "discovered, and correctly understood what they were".

I see what you say. The thing I’m challenging is the notion that there is a binary “correct/not-correct” understanding. In my view it is more like a scale where the depth of things correctly understood grows.

The ancient chinese description clearly correctly understood that what they are seeing are the bones of some long ago lived creature with large bodies. The same text also made incorrect assumptions (for example that they died because they could not fly up to heaven).

But it is not like suddenly in whenever you says dinosaurs were discovered they understood everything about them correctly. Just to note a few earlier mistakes: the lack of feathers in depictions, and the famous nose horn of the Crystal Palace dinosaurs.

What might be confusing is that the word “dinosaur” is used in scientific literature while the world “dragon” is associated with fantasy and legends. But this is just a linguistic difference. The world dinosaur is a portmanteau from two greek words, coined by a western scientist. Obviously the ancient chinese sources could not have used it before that.

In short: Are we now more knowledgeable about these once lived animals than the scholars of the 4th century China? Massively, without a doubt. Is there some bright line where we can delineate “correctly understood” from not correctly understood? I would say no, discovery is more of an incremental process.

Regarding Chinese dragon bones:

http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2021/03/dinosaur-fossils-...

I think that's OPs point. It's shoehorned nonsense.

They found bones.

Edit: I got this completely wrong, see comment from @Joeri

> Trolls are really cultural memory of Neanderthals

Stating this as a fact is wrong, it's conjecture, and very dubious at that. In fact a few seconds research and common sense would undermine that. There are legends of giants in africa <https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/gigantes/Africa.html> but the range of Neanderthals included that, see "Known Neanderthal range in..." in map here <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal>

> The witch craze was due to ergot poisoning etc.

Ditto, and even less likely if you've done any reading. I think you've badly mixed up two things here.

Baseless but over-confident statements of 'fact' are getting annoying. Please try to elevate the conversation (unless you are, ahem, trolling).

The comment you’re replying to is mocking these theories, not supporting them.

Our question is: Why did the Pythia go into a frenzy?

The major theory you hear about this is that the Oracle was ingesting some kind of drug, possibly a psychedelic derived from rye fungi - but who can say with any certainty? Maybe it was just similar to the 'speaking in tounges' religious phenomenon, which has examples from all over the world:

https://www.skeptical-science.com/religion/speaking-in-tongu...

Maybe it was just BS. Don't write off the simplest explanation.

"Drugs" is simple enough. Actually training naked virgins to go bananas without some chemical help seems a little more complicated.

Something the article doesn't seem to consider is the possibilty that there was some kind of (natural or built) chamber where the gas could get trapped and thus concentration be higher.

Not training. Maybe she figured out that making up bullshit gave her power. Seems a lot simpler than "drugs".

For some people, yes, but various cultures throughout time gave people, that we'd diagnose with some form of schizophrenia-related conditions today, somewhat revered or respected positions as prophets, medicine men, etc for the very real mental experiences they had. That is to say that some people may have been in it for power, but there are some that were earnest in their experiences, having really experienced something spiritual, even if it was just in their heads.

I think this is too cynical. This was all religious practice for the time, and the Oracle probably believed she was actually receiving visions from Apollo just as many modern churchgoers believe in visions and prophecies from God.

Can’t it be both? I’d you truly believe the earth is flat because the person who taught you geography purposely led you to believe so, isn’t that both a sincere belief and a lie?

Yes, since the definition of 'lie' covers both intentional and unintentional deception, but I interpreted the above comment to be referring to intentional lies. " Maybe she figured out that making up bullshit gave her power" doesn't read as sincere belief to me.

Using the definition of “lie” that includes unintentional false statements sort of dilutes it to be meaningless. It means everyone is a habitual liar (“you said it was 23C when it’s actually 23.5C you bald-faced liar!”).

Depends who's defining "bullshit", I guess.

The role must have been filled by dozens of different individuals over the centuries, it seems reasonable to assume that there was some kind of induction process for new recruits.

I think so. Churches have practices that some people might deem a bit odd. They involve a learned process and without the influence of drugs.

Alcohol consumption (and production) by monks and priests is well documented. Also they hotbox the whole church a few times a year, maybe the mix used to be more interesting, especially when you have a monastery with a good medicinal garden.

You're talking about Christian traditions, though. This is specifically about pre-Christian cults.

There is (frank)inscense. Which has been used since long before them. Just search for "psychoactive inscense"

It is plausible, we only have to look to social media and politicians to see what they do to people.

Take prophecy its much like crystal ball gazing, where the crystal ball reader gives a vague report which is open to interpretation for people who are looking for hope can get something to cling onto. A good example is left handed people have historically been seen as wrong 'uns in the bible so right handed people can be prejudiced in much the same way as the rich look down at the poor or white Americans generally view non whites as inferior.

When looking at "spiritual" experiences sometimes the experience can give a clue to what sort of drug may be involved.

For example DMT aka Dimethyltryptamine often generates fractal machine elves hallucinations. https://tripsitter.com/dmt/machine-elves/

Calea zacatechichi however you pronounce it gives you vivid dreams https://tripsitter.com/calea-zacatechichi/

LSD is reportedly fuzzy visuals if Timothy Leary's book is anything to go by.

Hallucinogens suggest to me the parts of the brain they affect.

So when looking at religious texts like some listed here https://www.openbible.info/topics/prophecy_visions_and_dream... how much of the bible is really just accounts of people who have knowingly or otherwise ingested some drugs? They didnt have science like we have it today so like we see with some scientific studies, we see a level of explanation projected onto the results that sometimes causes the tail to wag the dog, aka becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.

Whats scary is that even today the sky fairies aka god(s) still control much of this planets population through govt, religions or just generally superstitious people. Like alcohol, its a way for people to blame anyone but themselves for their actions, whilst also offering a form of very cheap psychological therapy.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7969-gamblers-are-a-s...

I think people generally recognise that AI is good at spotting what humans can not as this article suggests. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61609689 ""AI can sniff out areas of significances. Humans do a very bad job at layering data, whereas AI can do it in seconds," says Mr O'Shannessy."

Its quite likely AI will probably end up killing religion, prophecy, superstition and erratic behaviour in general, unless drug taking increases through the relaxation of cannabis and other drugs.

You should check out the story of Ehud in Judges. He’s left handed and specifically successful in his task because of what was otherwise seen as a deficiency at that time.

Its in the lexicon of the language as well, ie one the right side of the law.

So as AI can show Judges are biased and there is different times of the day people seeking parole should go before the judge to seek a favourable outcome, like just after lunch, science is slowly stealing everyone's privacy and there is no where to hide!

>Its quite likely AI will…

A deus ex machina, if you will.

One of the main functions of the Oracle was to tell people where to settle, move and colonize. This played a major role in the Greek colonization movement from 800-400 BC around the Mediterranean and Black Sea.

One woman and her priests became a central clearing house for the ideas and issues of the entire Greek world. She was almost certainly the most influential person in the world.

The Oracle work was combine with the Panhellenic Pythian games (music, art and sports). In the off season, Apollo went north to the Hyperboreans — and the cult of Dionysus took over. The Oracle was part of a whole cultural complex that played many functional values. I’m not sure what being “just BS” could mean in this context.

Thats what i thought, might al be part of the conception, the make believe show.

The only picture of the Pythian priestess is a red figure drinking cup from around 430 BC. She sits on a bronze tripod, holds laurel leaves and a bowl or water or wine.

She would, apparently, listen to the rustle of the leaves— scry into the ripples of water — and feel the resonant vibrations of the tripod. All in order to channel the wisdom of the god Apollo.

Sources of randomness to support creative inspiration. Seems plausible.

Here is the image:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-only-surviving-image...

Also, the ethylene theorists have a rebuttal. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/155636507014778...

It’s funny that neither paper attempted to just try the stuff and, you know, attempt mantic divination.

And there is some evidence for those laurel leaves (which were chewed) to be psychoactive. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/581067/summary

And, finally, that the oracle used lots (dice, basically) for divination. More randomness. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/358831

Came here to say the same thing, it's either Laurel or Oleander leaves that Pythia (the high priestess) either chewed or inhaled (their fumes). At least that's what I remember from high school and what most Greeks know. It's debated that the whole Oracle of Delphi thing could be a very well organized scam, but that's another discussion.

It's a place worth the visit: https://www.visitgreece.gr/mainland/central-greece/delphi/

  Also, the ethylene theorists have a rebuttal. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/155636507014778 ...

This page 404’s - do you have another source?

GP included HN's ellipsis when copying the link from a previous comment of theirs.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/155636507014778...

Prophesying was a common function for ancient priests.

The flights of birds, the guts of sacrificial offerings. E All sorts of things.

The prophesies were usually very pragmatic and politically conservative (not edgy).

It’s not hard to do. Many modern magicians do the same thing. Fortune cookies, etc.

It’s not hard to do this, but being intoxicated makes it harder not easier.

Cynical me thinks the simplest explanation is it was all just a big show they put on. Similar to when my aunt went to a fortune teller who guessed she had six kids. The fortune teller was probably just well informed about the local environment.

If you're running an Oracle business, your customers are already locked in. It's a long pilgrimage to get there, so you've probably got something important to ask about. The sales people will know roughly what kind of relational data is precious to you, and your branding makes Oracle a natural choice, despite what the techies of the time might say (it's expensive! There's a free and open source that we can get high at!). Once they're there, you keep the magic going by offering associated services. Maybe a bit if consulting on what the old lady said. Of course the consulting will always include coming back for more prophesies.

Most of the business is knowing what kinds of things people want to hear, and feeding back a few things you found. After all it's only once a month there's a seance, the rest of the time can be spent hanging around finding out what the customers want.

If you look into the examples of oracular statements from Delphi[0], and assume them to be an accurate representation, many of them are vague enough that a "true" interpretation can be found in hindsight from various outcomes.

And it is likely that a lot of those prophecies were informed by having a unique amount of access to political and social dealings throughout the Greek world. It helps when all the kings and all the priests come to you and tell you their secrets.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oracular_statements_fr...

This isn't asking the hard question though: how did the oracle see the future?

According to mystical based beliefs described in A Textbook of Theosophy by C.W. Leadbeater:

> When a man thinks of any concrete object - a book, a house, a landscape - he builds a tiny image of the object in the matter of his mental body. This image floats in the upper part of that body, usually in front of the face of the man and at about the level of the eyes. It remains there as long as the man is contemplating the object, and usually for a little time afterwards, the length of time depending upon the intensity and the clearness of the thought. This form is quite objective, and can be seen by another person, if that other has developed the sight of his own mental body. If a man thinks of another, he creates a tiny portrait in just the same way. If his thought is merely contemplative and involves no feeling (such as affection or dislike) or desire (such as a wish to see the person) the thought does not usually perceptively affect the man of whom he thinks.

These mental bodies are not considered by the textbook to be bound by time, given they are "astral bodies" for which, under certain conditions, time and space don't matter.

I think first it would need to be established that she did in fact see the future.

This is an example of Positivism.

I think the primary problem with positivism is the knowledge about the universe is never fully attained, so it feels more like a confused reasoning process. The assumption the scientific method will explain everything someday is irrational. When is that going to happen? With more work? What positivism really is, is a commitment to a bunch of work in the future to "prove" something is this and not that. The future never arrives.

Mysticism is the flipside of that. A mystical approach builds a metaphor to exist that "makes sense" but can't really be tested or analyzed by scientific methods. Faith takes over there, where just believing something irrational to be true, makes it true. Maybe that includes visualizing something over and over again?

Between these two extremes sits a philosophy that holds that there is value in both kinds of knowledge, and that both can be used to improve our understanding of the world. This philosophy emphasizes the need for both scientific and spiritual knowledge in order to create a complete picture of reality.

Unfortunately, the scientific method is a bit annoying sometimes, given it's absolute insistence all things may be disproved. It's a little like a virus in that regard, growing without bounds or purpose, other than to try to avoid the mystical outlooks at all costs.

Mysticism is a not an "understanding of the world" but a way of framing our knowledge of the world and coping with the unknown and the unknowable.

The realm of the unknown and the unknowable shrinks as our tools advance but there are very good reasons to think it will never disappear as there are both provably unknowable truths amd facts that are practicaly impossible to learn.

> Faith takes over there, where just believing something irrational to be true, makes it true.

This only applies to a limited set of things (the unknowable), getting enough people to believe the world is flat won't make that a true belief, no matter how many people have how much faith.

The types of things that faith can make true are subjective, sociocultural or related to our inner lives.

> Unfortunately, the scientific method is a bit annoying sometimes, given it's absolute insistence all things may be disproved.

In no way, shape or form does the scientific method suggest this, let alone insist on it.

There is a long history of faith pairing quite productively with the scientific method. The network of scientific knowledge is primarily drive by one thing: curiosity, not any sort of animus against the mystical.

>> Unfortunately, the scientific method is a bit annoying sometimes, given it's absolute insistence all things may be disproved.

> In no way, shape or form does the scientific method suggest this, let alone insist on it.

You are right about this. The scientific method doesn't insist things are disproved. It makes a practice of disproving things until there is faith that it isn't disprovable. It doesn't continue forever, but the practice of doing it with another thing continues after, doesn't it?

Well okay, but when the scientific method produces knowledge, the voracity of that knowledge can be checked by an observer. When a mystic convinces a large number of people that their opinions are in fact, truths, that is not a process that can be checked by an observer, and the “knowledge” produced has nothing tying itself back to reality.

The process cant, but the knowledge can be. You seem to be arguing against dogma, not a mythopeotic view. And fair call, religious power structures do a lot of harm.

The “large number of people” could be a full on religious dogma, but it could also be a smallish cult out in the hinterlands.

How do corporations forecast the future?

Poorly, on the whole.

A critique of a strawman of empiricism, is not really a justification for an alternative truth system (mysticism.).

Yes, there are things that are unknowable, even with the tools of empiricism.

But pointing out this issue, in no way supports the idea of using a non-sense ideology in its place, or even ascribing any value to such a thing.

> that holds that there is value in both kinds of knowledge

No, there is no knowledge in mysticism. And is it a bad argument to point out a supposed problem in empiricism, as a justification for a different system, when that other system doesn't deal with the problem any better.

> believing something irrational to be true, makes it true.

Believing something to be true, does not make it true, unless you redefine the word "true" to a nonsense definition of "Well a true thing, is whatever we believe to be true. Gotcha, I win! I just created a self-consistent tautology, by playing word games, and making up a new definition! You can't call me wrong, because it's a consistent, self referential belief! That intro to philosophy class sure was useful!"

The essay to read is “The Will To Believe” from William James.

This is where the term “leap of faith” was coined. That illustration shows that, at least where self-confidence is concerned, belief in one’s own capabilities can greatly influence the outcome. Do not read this as a rebuttal to your last point; it’s a nuance, and may be limited to one’s own self-conception.

That essay also discusses the circumstances where it makes sense to respect non-rational[1] beliefs:

> Genuine option – "we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind"[0]

All of those terms are precisely defined in the essay, and the Wikipedia article has a decent lightning summary. The point is, when you are faced with coming up with a personal philosophy or set of guiding principles, you are forced to figure it out, and science is not (yet or possibly ever) capable of providing answers to those questions for most people.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Believe#Sections...

[1] I prefer the term “non-rational” here because “irrational” has connotations of “going against rational thought” whereas “non-rational” implies “areas which are not covered by rational thought.”

> A critique of a strawman of empiricism, is not really a justification for an alternative truth system (mysticism.).

That's over my pay grade, but yes, I understand what you are saying.

I think that "knowledge" in the case of mysticism is just "knowing" something to be true or not, but not having the rational understanding of it. Maybe that's still off, so thank you for helping define it better.

Regarding the last comment, I was saying that some believe that believing something to be true makes it true, but I'm not so sure about that for myself.

The predictive power that most people have (at least with normally functioning brains, for some neutral definition of normal being the baseline) is surprisingly good. Executive function requires making many such predictions and forecasts every minute. If I had to give a rough estimate, I’d say slightly greater than a coin flip for future event outcomes.

Yes. The explanation “it was all made up by one or more writers” sufficiently covers not just the precognition, but also the hallucinations and even the existence of the oracle.

I think enough prediction requests have been found that the existence of the Oracle is non-controversial.

Probably the same way you can construct a data oracle to project out guesses for what a time series will do?

The thinking goes: the more, nd better sources of market intelligence you can feed to the oracle, the better predictions it can make.

I would assume the oracle at delphi was being fed the most / best market intelligence to then prophesize from

Same way I can see the future of everyone commenting here with near 100% accuracy.

If you're curious, I can see that you will die.

If you're scared, I can help you avoid death for only $4.99/day or a war against Lichtenstein, your choice.

Do as I say, or do you really want to risk dying tomorrow?

Oracle: Lisa, this supplicant has not groveled in the least

Lisa: Then zot them into oblivion darling

Oracle: Your groveling is unacceptable! I shall ZOT THEE!

You have been zotted!

There is a good Religion for Breakfast episode about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IJfmaGs72c

Thank you for that. This is an excellent review of the original theory and its rebuttals.

His entire channel is great. It's one of the only YouTube channels where I can't think of a single bad video he's put out.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind has a very interesting answer to this question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...

Such a fun theory, we will probably never know how rocks started thinking…

Which is...

Temporal lobe epilepsy is hypothesized[1][2] to be a contributing factor towards the visions, fits, etc that various prophets throughout history experienced. Something like half of those with temporal lobe epilepsy experience hyperreligiosity or salvation[3] with their condition, along with religious hallucinations, delusions, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_lobe_epilepsy#Effects...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschwind_syndrome#Hyperreligi...

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2654983/

A much more obvious explanation is that it involved nothing more than stream-of-consciousness rambling. You take a random sentence and you convince someone it's deep and profound. They work hard trying to understand it, and they end up having a sudden moment of insight. The sentence itself did nothing. It was the work in trying to understand it that did the trick.

Reading tea leaves? You're just looking at something random. Scrying? It's the same. Nothing about the Oracle of Delphi strikes me as odd enough to demand a deeper explanation than that. It was just a person making nonsensical statements.

our minds are perfectly capable of frenzied hallucinations without any external substance, especially one trained specifically for this purpose probably only had to meditate or chant or indulge some trigger for a moment.

I remember the most exciting book on this topic that I read, was the book on Constantin (the great) by Jacob Burkhardt. While maybe being a bit speculative, at least partly, I had the impression of highly plausible puzzle-solving by someone who actually read and understood the ancient sources. You will find a lot of details on questions like this. I find it most recommendable for anyone who is interested in (the making of) politics and religion now and then.

People speak in tongues at church because they are expected to, have seen it before, and they lie about it. It seems that should be the presumption in the case of Delphi, too, rather than a biochemical mechanism or "antipositivism".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_in_tongues#Medical_re...

I don't think most people "lie about it", at least not intentionally.

I think it's more likely they get really caught up in the moment or something among those lines. I am interested in what in what it would be like to go to a concert of a bar with one of these people.

> I don't think most people "lie about it", at least not intentionally.

No, they do, and are usually pushed into it by prayer retreats and a forced lack of sleep (in the stories I've heard.) It's after they fake it once in order to sleep, then get into the habit of faking it, that they decide that they were never actually faking it, retconning the first incident into an awakening.

It was once only tiny pentecostal sects that did this (speak in tongues), but evangelical churches grew out of that tradition and took over the world. Literally didn't exist 100 years ago. It's also where we got faith healing and snake-handling.

edit: Again, barely older than Scientology or the Nation of Islam.

So they don’t lie about it. From their perspective they reinterpret sleep deprivation as metaphysical labour to culminate in ecstatic mystical experience. Especially in puritanical, austere contexts the power to shape an experienced story, such that there is a communal acceptance of a form of pleasure, is valuable, and the more unintentional the reinterpretation the more profound its influence and expression.

What percentage of the congregation ticks all these boxes, consistently over time?

One of my takeaways from listening to a lot of Telltale (an ex Jehovah's Witness atheist channel on youtube) was that the stereotypical charismatic Christian glossolalia is probably a learned skill. I have heard that people who left these groups are still capable of exhibiting it on command.

I have not actually met an ex-charismatic who could demonstrate this to me, but I would be interested in meeting one. I have never done glossolalia myself, I always thought there was something off about it. I have been at a charismatic church where people were practicing it. I was relieved that they were not extremely loud, they weren't rolling or flailing around, but I admit I found the audible chaos of it somewhat unnerving. I've heard charismatic Christians speak of the presence of God, or of spiritual power as a feeling of "electricity" or tingling. It seems to me that a major aim in that movement is to feel highly energized.

I ended up in a faith tradition that has a difficult but slow, calm, scripted practice, one that evangelicals would be likely to call "vain repetitions". I think the accusation could stick that I badly wanted some beauty and order. I believe that the gift of tongues is experienced as a miraculous automatic translation in the spoken word; we see it as a reversal of what happened at the tower of Babel.

Some charismatics say that spiritual gifts have a learned element. “Teaching” is listed as a spiritual gift and no one expects teachers to not need to develop skills, why would prophesying, discerning spirits, speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues, etc. be any different. Of course, there are stories of people spontaneously speaking in tongues because their tongue was moving on its own. My view is that most speaking in tongues is … optimistic, but I also heard a story where one woman was just saying the same syllables over and over, and one day a visitor came over and asked her “do you know what you are saying?” “No” “it’s an African language, and I’m one of about five outsiders who have learned it; you’re saying ‘praise God praise God praise God’. I also met a Vietnamese guy that could not speak English, but his group needed to speak to the English-speaking admin of the camp to seek asylum. This group appointed him as spokesman, and prayed that he would be able to speak English. The next day he went in to talk to the guy, and had no problems being understood, because he was speaking intelligible English without realizing it, and none of them having ever learned English. Those stories are the exceptions, although since charismatics tend to value the experience of God, those tend to be the “expected normal”. The miracles make great stories to tell, but the more normal miracle is mixed with the mundane and not easy to identify (after all, Christ is human and divine, how do you tell which is which? This mixture of human and divine seems to be what the Bible describes God as seeking, so it would make sense he would prefer to work that way)

I’ve experienced tingling strongly one time. It was sort of like a non-localized internal “buzzing”, kind of like if you’d drunk a lot of coffee but without the tightening of the muscles. I’ve also experienced kind of an internal itch, where it’s just easier to shake my hands.

The charismatics I’ve been a part of are more of the love flavor, though. (e.g. “but we do not have a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and [wisdom]”) This feels like a warmth in the chest, and if you partner with it tends to lead either to feeling very relaxed and happy, or more energetic and happy.

It took me quite a while to be able to sense it, though, similar to how it took me a long time be able to taste the flavor of an individual herb in a dish of food. And there’s an element of partnering, too. If you’re resistant to the whole idea, or mad at God/the Church/people/life you’re a lot less likely to experience it. There are times where I missed the experience because I was resistant. Also, it seems like some people are quicker to be affected; by the time I sense something strongly, everyone else is likely to be on the floor. I’m not sure if it’s something about how I’m made or just a resistance to being out of control.

I really don't care what it would be like to go to a social event with one of those people, nor do I care to deeply plumb the depths of the distinction between a lie and untruth.

cues hardcore hip-hop

Seems like the author is neglecting the possibility of human intervention. The priests and priestesses may have found a way to collect ethylene gas from the stream and released it intentionally at the right time. A trade secret so to speak. Hidden secrets in religion are not uncommon.

> Hidden secrets in religion are not uncommon. //

It's not clear what you mean here, could you give some examples?

Not the person you replied to of course, but when I saw this the concept of mystery religions comes to mind for me. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries They were even widespread in the same region at the same time.

I was referring to "hidden knowledge", see Wikipedia's entry on "esotericism":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_esotericism#Esotericis...

I think it's worth noting-- there's some serious work exploring these kinds of things in the ancient world (Temple of Kykeon, Soma of the Rg Veda, Amrta, Cintamani) and it's still an open subject. Terence McKenna theorized that Psilocybin mushrooms might be responsible for, "mystical visions through substance" but as a practicing, "Hindu" (Chaitanya follower) I've come to find that in the case of the mystical substances of ancient India that there's actually a very involved and very profound philosophical tradition(s) surrounding Amrta (Love of Godhead; Bhakti) Soma (Moon Juice for The God of Heaven) and Cintamani (Puranic equivalent of the Philosopher's Stone) that really doesn't have anything to do with, "psychedelic culture" outside of being generally mind expanding.

tl;dr: She was last holy remnant of the age the Hellenic Greeks idealized about-- The Homeric period before book culture and the Sophists. The time when magic and unadulterated heroism ruled the Earth. Think about Tolkien the next time you trip. The magic isn't in a molecule baby, it's in us!

There was a World Day fair at UC Davis a few years back. One tent had Hari Krishnas in it. I asked one of the Hari Krishnas, "Do you visualize?", and he replied with a beam, "Oh, yes. I do visualize and I love it! I see all sorts of wonderful things." He then pushed a colorful copy of the Rig Veda in my hands and ran off smiling.

A bit later I went over to the Zen booth and talked to a young monk. They had no materials in the booth, only a piece of paper with the swooshed circle symbol. After talking to him briefly I asked, "Do you visualize?". He looked at me calmly for just a moment and then replied, "I practice Zen." I then repeated myself, asking " Yes, but do you visualize?". Immediately he replied, "I practice Zen."

Later I would joke it was at the moment I became enlightened, but understanding this from a fundamental standpoint is both a choice of faith and a logical conclusion done by the mind.

People do visualize, but some people don't. Practicing Zen is about not adding to things, but living in the moment and being aware of your surroundings. The monk may have been able to visualize, but he knew that doing so would pull him out of the moment so he didn't.

Conversely, the Hari Krishna visualized at will, by his own admission when I was asking about it, and allowed it to be a thing he was aware of in the few moments we spoke.

There's a lot here in your comment-- Thanks for the reply! I'm actually a practicing, "Hare Krsna Devotee" under Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj in the line of Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math.

I think there's so much in different spiritual circles. What seems to unite them all is a kind of concept of, "surrendering wholeheartedly to..." and I think that manifests itself in a huge diversity of ways. I think that what Zen ends up missing is a viable moral concept and an explanation of what, "love" actually is at a metaphysical level. The reversi-logic Koan thing gets really old after awhile but I can appreciate how that might resonate with some people. Zen is very, "interesting" but having sat on the mat for some time that the, "great realization" has always been, "stop holding out for a great realization; it's all a crock of shit including the crock of shit you tell yourself that it's all a crock of shit." I know a lot of old burnout hippy-boomer types that got lost in Zen land and never found their way back. I also know a lot of Hare Krsna devotees that got lost in Prabhupadaland. I think it's worth noting that pretty soon we're both going to be biologically dead forever.

I suppose it's all worth a consider. Hare Krsna Prabhuji!

>> Positivist dispositions can lead to the acceptance of claims because they have a scientific form, not because they are grounded in robust evidence and sound argument.

Interesting that is a form of hallucination itself :)

"Originally this was a young virgin, but after trouble with kidnappings..."

Jesus. That's a grim insight into the culture of the time, though perhaps it shouldn't have been given Greek legends.

I know that magic is poo-pooed and all, but, have you considered that answer as well? Or perhaps they weren't hallucinations, and instead divinations. Calling what the Oracle of Delphi had "hallucinations" puts a bad spin on it from the onset.

Or lets not get hung up with the word "magic". Lets call it a 5th type of energy. Mechanical detection don't work, but a number of humans can feel it. Hard to measure for sure. Some people are more connected to that energy than others. But again, being human-centric at this time makes verification hard/impossible.

What I would adore is a theorem to connect that energy to the 4 other types of energy (EM, strong, weak, gravity). And then, we can start scientifically describing all of those "weird" human issues of stuff we just shouldn't know (I'm thinking of: past life recollections, feeling someone staring at you, parental intuitions that something's wrong with a child, etc).

> makes verification hard/impossible

In other words, unfalsifiable. That means it's unscientific too.

There are whole classes of things that were "unscientific" before we advanced to the point where they were scientific.

Medicine was VERY unscientific until recent days. Bacteriological theory was unscientific until it wasn't. Psychiatry was, and I'd argue, still unscientific. And machine learning is equal parts of magic and statistical math. Most practitioners in ML/AI area just tweak knobs and hope that some hyperparameter does infinitesimally better.

The key takeaway is that not even knowing the appropriate metrology to engage in makes this a very hard scientific endeavour. But that is the first problem to solve - how do you measure whatever that is. And once you can measure, then you can manipulate.

There's too many of these stories Ive heard from family, friends, myself, and others to think that this area is some sort of a delusion and fake. But what is its nature? Unsure. That's why I explore.

Are you seriously saying that your idea that magic is a fifth force (which you called "energy") of physics is as scientific as modern medicine or machine learning?

> Are you seriously saying that your idea that magic is a fifth force (which you called "energy")

Possibly, yes. And I'm not the one calling it "energy". That's the nomenclature of MANY occult groups. What that type of energy that is, I do not know.

Just like anything in the sphere of how our universe works, I think that there is enough interesting phenomenon to warrant further study.

> physics is as scientific as modern medicine or machine learning?

Why not? Those subjects were too "shrouded in mystery" until they weren't. And even without a rigorous scientific theory, we can still do experiments and attempt to discern this "energy" and come up with ways to accurately detect it. From detection, we can then start making accurate models to be able to manipulate. This is no different than other types of physics.

(As a note, the term "energy" is used by many occult groups. If anything, it appears to be a form of mental concentration. I've seen numerous cases where someone was envisioning a 3d shape, and I or others could see it. There are no good explanations to accurately describe this in existing science. And we know science is ever-growing, since what we know is incomplete.)

You don't need a "rigorous scientific theory" right off the bat, but what you do need are some kind of testable predictions. That's what medicine and physics have but magic lacks.

Out of curiosity: if something isn't scientific, does that mean that it doesn't exist?

No. It just means that you shouldn't do things to make other people believe that it is scientific.

Psychology is generally considered a science of sorts is it not? And it is certainly non-deterministic, and thus can't be verified like the deterministic majority of scientific matters.

Things don't need to be deterministic to be falsifiable.

If the behavior is not consistent, then what is it that you are falsifying?

Is all of psychology falsifiable?

I said deterministic, not consistent. For example, exactly when an atom will undergo radioactive decay isn't deterministic, but if you observe enough of them, you can match your observations with your theory's probability distribution.

I just get the sneaky suspicion that you're letting your biases get in the way of scientific curiosity.

Just how many cultures had things that may be called deities talk to them? As far as I can tell, almost all Earth cultures have had that. We're talking about the Oracle of Delphi in here - and according to lore, was divinations (as in Divine messages). So, again, I ask - what's really going on? And this wasn't the only one.

And what's more curious and interesting is how durable groups that do occult stuff are. John Dee was Queen Elizabeth's court magister, and created the whole Enochian system in the 1570s. Of course, this can be glossed over due to them not really understanding science. But we have a magical heritage even way before Dee to now.

And infamous occultist, Aleister Crowley, even said that "Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." Those are certainly things to inquire - can we see effects? How do they work? How do they not work? Can others sense them? How do we go about sensing it?

Long story short, I see that there's something there. And a whole lot of other people do as well. Enough anecdotes starts to equal a study. And what's the worst that will happen? That I fail? (And even if I fail, still provides more data that wasn't done before; hence a success.)

I'd have nothing against a proper scientific experiment to see whether or not magic is real. But the scientific method absolutely requires falsifiability, so if you can't come up with a falsifiable hypothesis, then you're doing pseudoscience.

I notice you are using science and the scientific method interchangeably.

How can science study magic without knowing whether it is falsifiable first? Would that require them to do potentially unscientific/pseudoscientific things not becoming of a proper scientist? If we allowed that, next thing they'd be thinking without dogmatic constraints!

It's fine to do science without knowing up front whether something is falsifiable. One of the steps in the scientific method is to formulate a hypothesis. You can go up to that step even before you figure out whether you have something falsifiable; you just can't go past it until you do.

> I said deterministic, not consistent. For example, exactly when an atom will undergo radioactive decay isn't deterministic, but if you observe enough of them, you can match your observations with your theory's probability distribution.

Can you pull of this same trick with humans, across all their behaviors?

Why is OP so sure it was a hallucination? Could be fraud. Or not.

Language shaping the way you think always feels off to me. Most languages are pretty much universal and unbiased and are capable of expressing an infinite amount of concepts. As easily as their negations, subtle variations, contextual dependencies, nuances, etc.

The hard version of this, sometimes called Strong Whorfianism (after the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is relatively easy to discredit. Imagine a system of gears. Turn them and adjust them in your mind. You’re thinking in images rather than language.

The soft version of this, that our thinking is influenced by the limits of language is almost certainly true. To give a very HN example, think about the work done in different programming languages or stacks. The way you think about a problem and how to solve it will be influenced by the language and tools you use (and know). You learn to think in a particular language or tool set. That doesn’t mean that you can’t think outside of it, but it does mean that there is a tendency to stay inside of it, inside the structures you know.

In the same way, some languages lend themselves more readily to certain culturally prevalent concepts. More nuanced words for snow or love, different color boundaries, different emotion words or nuances, etc.

I ran into this often when learning French as an emotion researcher. I’d try to express a scientific conception of a mood or emotion from English, and the French speaker would suggest a translation but it clearly didn’t mean exactly what I was going for. And the way the French speaker would push back was interesting, “we wouldn’t say it like that, we’d say it like this”. But the “this” and “that” were not exactly the same. I was watching us both be constrained by our language context. It could be pushed through, but the tendency was to just move forward as if we’d reached common ground but hadn’t fully.

The fact that some things are more easily — or better, directly — expressable in some languages doesn’t necessarily imply your thinking is changed or that you can’t internalize the concept without access to that language.

I don’t have twenty different words for specific shades of green or types of snow, but can still easily recognize them and use them in my thinking.

Yes, but think about languages that don't have the concept of green, but only a shade of blue that we would call green.

This would not stop your ability to describe it, but would change how you relate it to other colors.

> Imagine a system of gears. Turn them and adjust them in your mind. You’re thinking in images rather than language.

How is this demonstrating anything? Can someone do the same who doesn't know what a gear is?

The idea is that it an example of explicitly non-linguistic thinking—hence not all thinking can be defined or limited by linguistic structures.

a counterpoint is that this example begs the question; it assumes a priori that “thinking about gears” is not a language itself.

which, who knows, it might be!

Unless you already start with the assumption that all mental processing is language, I don't think "rotating gears in your head" qualifies as a language. I mean, you can have discussions about what constitutes "language", but there are a number of expected attributes, and visually rotating shapes in your mind doesn't possess any of them.

Extra points for a rare completely appropriate use of “begs the question.”

I tended to agree with the soft version. But I just realized, what it's saying is that you need to know about a concept. The language is not necessary.

In theory you can imagine a concept, not give it a name, and still use it. You can't communicate it through, which severely limits it's use. And somehow I suspect that naming the concept makes it easier to manipulate, so perhaps that is a 'weak' version of the theory?

It also would not be propagated along with the culture, which is the hypothesis at its core: not that people of one given language are incapable of understanding some concepts, but rather that their cultural bagage tends to bias them and shape their way of thinking (which I would think is obviously true to anyone who’s ever lived in a foreign country or read literature or news articles in a foreign language).

The constant creation of new words for new things and concepts seems to limit that idea.

Only dead languages are static, otherwise they can all adapt to new ideas as long as their sufficiently useful.

It is not incompatible, the time scales involved are different.

By limit I mean the scope of it’s impact is limited. If new ideas become new words then language isn’t a limitation on idea formation, expression, or spread.

Sure some ideas might spread more easily as say an obvious and catchy campaign slogan, there is a maximum benefit to such advantages. “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” is longer say “No taxation without representation” but number of works doesn’t seem to be a major limitation here. People just encode such ideas into otherwise meaningless slogans like “Promises Kept.” Soon people don’t wonder what “The wage gap” or “Pro life” is referring to.

I see your point but I feel it’s a little bit weakened by the fact that you’re limited to using words to describe it.

Can you conceive of a thought experiment that is impossible to put into words? Yes or no is acceptable, but if the answer is yes I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.

It depends on what you mean by "conceive" and "thought experiment." If the thought experiment can be expressed, you can come up with a word to describe the expression of the idea. I think I could imagine some inexpressible ideas (this seems like it would logically follow from the proof that some things are not computable.)

Of course, when you deal with real language your language itself is constrained. If you need to invent a bunch of new words does that count?

The extra soft version is that verbal languages are interchangeable, but there are differences between verbal languages and nonverbal, like sign language.

> Most languages are pretty much universal and unbiased and are capable of expressing an infinite amount of concepts.

Yes, most of them are (or can be, with the addition of a couple of neologisms or borrowings). Just like you can do anything with any Turing-complete language. Languages and cultures still have biases and built-in world views.

For example, to most Europeans, the idea that you would need to estimate your social rank to properly address someone is utterly alien. In the best case, there is a polite form, which we also use for people we don’t know. So we don’t even think about social status when we ask someone what time it is. But there are languages where that isn’t the case at all, and this tends to make you constantly aware of the social status of the people around you. So it definitely does affect how tou think about things.

It does not mean that Europeans are incapable of understanding these things, just that it is not something they implicitly care about.

> For example, to most Europeans, the idea that you would need to estimate your social rank to properly address someone is utterly alien.

A phenomenon that is, at best, about a century old. Maybe.

That there aren’t grammatical forms or special declensions of words that signal rank relationships (as there are in, say, japanese) does not for an instant mean that we do not consciously choose linguistic styles based on social structure. Especially in Europe.

> That there aren’t grammatical forms or special declensions of words that signal rank relationships (as there are in, say, japanese) does not for an instant mean that we do not consciously choose linguistic styles based on social structure. Especially in Europe.

Is it then logical to conclude that in the general area of the topic of discussion, there is in fact no noteworthy difference between Japanese and other cultures? There is nothing that exists in reality within this domain that has escaped the gaze of science?

In Norwegian you still have to address the king with a more polite pronoun, my grandmother would use this pronoun generally for richer people.

As I understand in Swedish you still need to know someone’s progression to address them politely “how would the software engineer like his coffee?”

Edit: also in Norway most women would wear head coverings when outside 100 years ago. We are not that far from having a culture most of us despise today.

> For example, to most Europeans, the idea that you would need to estimate your social rank to properly address someone is utterly alien.

German is well known for having different pronouns based on social rank and familiarity.

Two of them, just like in French or Spanish: a standard one and a polite form for people you don’t know. Social rank does not factor in this.

I was familiar with my teachers and they still got addressed as “sie” exactly because a teacher socially outranks a student.

Not really. Even the children of vips (however you want to measure social status, either wealth, political power, or whatever; it’s not really rare to outrank teachers socially) say “sie” to their teachers or to strangers.

SQL and HTML/CSS and C and bash are all Turing complete. However we can easily see some languages are a better suited to expressing certain types of ideas than others.

If this is true for formal languages -- why would wouldn't this phenomena be accentuated at the natural language level.

Relatedly, there are known neurological differences in the brains of different language speakers impacting how they process information and where.

Stokes in the same location can have different impacts based on the language of the speaker.

This suggests there are architectural and processing differences.

The Cult of Kosmos of course, until Kassandra did away with those scheming manipulators. Good riddance. ;)

In this comment section: a hundred people either missing the point, proving the point, or both!

The voice of the Gods

Too much pressure?

Fumes. This has been what is assumed for years.

Watch the Religion for Breakfast video linked in this thread, or RTFA. The ethylene fume theory has been pretty thoroughly debunked.

Tl;Dr; we don't know

TL;DR: We have no idea if they were real, and if they were what caused them, and it's ok to be unsure and inconclusive sometimes.

Clarification: We have no idea if the hallucinogenic effects of the place were real, if they were mere theater, or something else altogether.

That a succession of women served as Oracles in the Temple of Apollo (for hundreds of years) is well supported.

I'm not sure I read the same thing. I think this misses the late point, that if empiricism can have weakness, what is its alternative?

Maybe the positivists’ antipositivism should just be “not everything demands an empirical explanation in order for us to continue functioning well in day-to-day life, and that’s just fine.”

> what is its alternative?

Accepting that we won’t know everything (but also accept that there are things we don’t know yet and that will be known in the future, and that it’s ok to change your mind in the face of new evidence).

Actually, it’s not really an alternative to empiricism, but I don’t thing that empiricism has this particular weakness.

That’s such a good summary. I should have started with reading the comments

I read a long time ago in a book that it was from the steam/vapor of the pit that they would hang out around. I forget what substance was floating out of it but it made them "high".

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