I may never know for sure (having never been hypnotized or anything of the kind myself, thankfully), but science points to a pretty solid hypothesis of what caused this odd trance state at Delphi.
What you need to know about the process:
- There's something called a Delphi Fault that formed about two million years ago, and it keeps getting bigger
- Slippage on the fault lines = adjacent rock masses heat up
- Petrochemicals are vaporized and gases rise
Then, according to science, these gases managed to sneak their way into the adyton where the Pythia sat.
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Dictionary time:
Adyton: a restricted area within the cella of a Greek temple, meaning "inaccessible" or "do not enter."
Pythia: name of the High Priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi. Name is derived from Python, which in myth was the original name of Delphi.
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Scientists think that these gases may have been the cause of the weird "prophetic trances" that the oracles underwent. Apparently, there were two kinds of trances typical of the oracle. One featured a Q&A session during which the oracle's voice sounded really weird, followed by the oracle seeming to be very loose and at ease. The second kind is somewhat like Chloe described of the bacchantes: some terrifying garbling animal-ish noises here, some body-flailing there. Sadly, after this type of trance, the oracle usually died (according to Plutarch).
Scientists think that this gas explanation makes sense because the behavior in both types of trances lines up with the behavior typical of people who have inhaled hydrocarbon gases.
Not the first hypothesis I would have come up with, but I thought this was pretty interesting.
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