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The Temple of Jupiter Ammon was in the deserts of Libya, nine days journey from Alexandria. It had a famous Oracle, which, according to ancient tradition, was established about 18 centuries before the time of Augustus, by two doves which flew away from Thebais in Egypt, and came, one to Dodona, and the other to Libya, where the people were soon informed of their divine mission.
The Oracle of Ammon was consulted by Hercules, Perseus, and others; but when it pronounced Alexander to be the son of Jupiter, such flattery destroyed its long established reputation, and in the age of Plutarch it was scarcely known. The situation of the temple was pleasant; and there was near it a fountain whose waters were cold at noon and midnight, and warm in the morning and evening. There were above 100 priests in the temple, but the elders only delivered oracles. There was also an Oracle of Jupiter Ammon in Aethiopia. [Click on image for full picture]
ORACLE OF DODONA.
Dodona was a town of Thresprotia in Epirus. There was in its neighbourhood, upon a small hill called Tmarus, a celebrated Oracle of Jupiter. The town and temple of the god were first built by Deucalion, after the universal deluge. It was supposed to be the most ancient Oracle of all Greece, and according to the traditions of the Egyptians mentioned by Herodotus, it was founded by a dove. Two black doves, as he relates, took their flight from the city of Thebes, in Egypt, one of which flew to the temple of Jupiter Ammon, and the other to Dodona, where with a human voice they acquainted the inhabitants of the country that Jupiter had consecrated the ground, which in future would give oracles. The extensive grove which surrounded Jupiter's temple was endowed with the gift of prophecy, and oracles were frequently delivered by the sacred oaks, and the doves which inhabited the place. This fabulous tradition of the oracular power of the doves, is explained by Herodotus, who observes that some Phoenicians carried away two priestesses from Egypt, one of which went to fix her residence at Dodona, where the Oracle was established. It may further be observed, that the fable might have been founded upon the double meaning of the word ¡®peleiai¡¯, which signifies doves in most parts of Greece, while in the dialect of the Epirots, it implies old women.
In ancient times the oracles were delivered by the murmuring of a neighbouring fountain, but the custom was afterwards changed. Large kettles were suspended in the air near a brazen statue, which held a lash in its hand. When the wind blew strong, the statue was agitated and struck against one of the kettles, which communicated the motion to all the rest, and raised that clattering and discordant din which continued for a while, and from which the priests drew their predictions. Some suppose that the noise was occasioned by the shaking of the leaves and boughs of an old oak, which the people frequently consulted, and from which they pretended to receive the oracles. It may be observed with more probability that the oracles were delivered by the priests, who, by concealing themselves behind the oaks, gave occasion to the multitude to believe that the trees were endowed with the power of prophecy. As the ship Argo was built with some of the oaks of the forest of Dodona, there were some beams in the vessel which gave oracles to the Argonauts, and warned them against the approach of calamity. Within the forest of Dodona there was a stream with a fountain of cool water, which had the power of lighting a torch as soon as it touched it. This fountain was totally dry at noon day, and was restored to its full course at midnight, from which time till the following noon it began to decrease, and at the usual hour was again deprived of its waters. The oracles of Dodona were originally delivered by men, but afterwards by women.
The eternal flame was carried by Vesta from the ark into the new world, passed through the ancient temples, provided to the inner circle at Pentecost, and taken to France by Mary Magdalene. In the United States, the best known Eternal Flame burns at the monument to President John F. Kennedy, in Arlington National Cemetery.
Mrs. Kennedy had expressed a desire to mark the president's grave with an eternal flame similar to that of the French Unknown Soldier in Paris. Three years after Kennedy's death, more than 16 million people had come to visit the Kennedy plot. Lighted by Mrs. Kennedy during the funeral, the Eternal Flame burns from the center of a five-foot circular flat-granite stone at the head of the grave. Visitor Information
The four great national festivals or games were: Olympic, held every four years, in honor of Zeus, on the banks of the Alpheus, in Elis; Pythian, celebrated once in four years, in honor of Apollo, at Delphi; the Isthmian, held every two years, at the Isthmian Sanctuary in the Isthmus of Corinth, in honor of Poseidon (Neptune); and the Nemean, celebrated at Nemea, in the second and fourth years of each Olympiad, in honor of the Nemean Juno.
THE ROMAN AUGERS.
"... The Augurs were certain Priests at Rome who foretold future events, whence their name, ¡®ab avium garritu.¡¯ They were first created by Romulus to the number of three. Servius Tullius added a fourth, and the tribunes of the people A. U. C., 454, increased the number to nine; and Sylla added six more, during his dictatorship. They had a particular college, and the chief amongst them was called Magister Collegii. Their office was honourable; and if any one of them was convicted of any crime, he could not be deprived of his privilege; an indulgence granted to no other sacerdotal body at Rome. The augur generally sat on a high tower, to make his observations. His face was turned towards the east, and he had the north to his left, and the south at his right. With a crooked staff he divided the face of the heavens into four different parts, and afterwards sacrificed to the gods, covering his head with his vestment. There were generally five things from which the augurs drew omens: the first consisted in observing the phenomena of the heavens, such as thunder, lightning, comets, &c. The second kind of omen was drawn from the chirping or flying of birds. The third was from the sacred chickens, whose eagerness or indifference in eating the bread which was thrown to them, was looked upon as lucky or unlucky. The fourth was from quadrupeds, from their crossing or appearing in some unaccustomed place. The fifth was from different casualties, which were called Dira, such as spilling salt upon a table, or wine upon one's clothes, hearing strange noises, stumbling or sneezing, meeting a wolf, hare, fox, or pregnant bitch. Thus did the Romans draw their prophecies; the sight of birds on the left hand was always deemed a lucky object, and the words 'sinister' & ¡®laous¡¯*, though generally supposed to be terms of ill luck, were always used by the augurs in an auspicious sense.
A strange old woman** came once to Tarquinius Superbus, king of Rome, with nine books,
copies of the following work, which she said were the ORACLES OF THE SIBYLS, and
proffered to sell them. But the king
The number of priests, in this, as in most other orders, was several times altered. The Duumviri continued till about the year of the city 388, when the tribunes of the people proferred a law, that there should be ten men elected for this service, part out of the nobility, and part out of the commons. We meet with the Decemviri all along from hence, till about the time of Sylla the dictator, when the Quindecemviri occur. It were needless to give any farther account of the Sibyls, than that they are generally agreed to have been ten in number; for which we have the authority of Varro; though some make them nine, some four, some three, and some only one. They all lived in different ages and countries, were all prophetesses; and, according to common opinion, foretold the coming of our Savior. As to the writing, Dempster tells us, it was on linen.
Solinus acquaints us, that the books which Tarquin bought, were burnt in the conflagration of the capitol, the year before Sylla's dictatorship. Yet there were others of their inspired writings, or at least copies or extracts of them, gathered up in Greece and other parts, upon a special search made by order of the senate; which were kept with the same care as the former, till about the time of Theodosius the Great, when, the greatest part of the senate having embraced the Christian faith, they began to grow out of fashion; till at last Stilicho burnt them all, under Honorius, for which he is severely censured by the poet Rutilius.
CUMA
The Sibyl from Cumae was the guide of Aeneas when he descended to the Underworld.
When Aeneas departed from Carthage, leaving in despair Queen Dido, with whom he had been amorously involved, he returned to Drepanum in Sicily, and thence he crossed to Italy, disembarking at Cuma on the coast of Campania in southern Italy.
"You shall have your wish, and with my guidance you shall see the dwellings of Elysium and the latest kingdom of the universe; and you shall see your dear father's shade." (The Sibyl to Aeneas. Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.110).
The people of Cuma were called Opici, and they affirmed that the boar's tusks dedicated in their sanctuary of Apollo had belonged to the Erymanthian boar, which Heracles trapped and brought to Mycenae when performing one of his Labours (Pau.8.24.5).
Museum Pieces
making some scruple about the price, she went away and burnt three of them; and returning with the six, asked the same sum as before. Tarquin only laughed at the humour; upon which the old woman left him once more; and after she had burnt three others, came again with those that were left, but still kept to her old terms. The king now began to wonder at her obstinacy, and thinking there might be something more than ordinary in the business, sent for the Augurs to consult what was to be done. They, when their divinations were performed, soon acquainted him what a piece of impiety he had been guilty of, by refusing a treasure sent to him from heaven, and commanded him to give whatever she demanded for the books that remained. The woman received her money, and delivered the writings, and only charging them by all means to keep them sacred, immediately vanished. Two of the nobility were presently after chosen to be the keepers of these oracles, which were laid up with all imaginable care in the capitol, in a chest under ground. They could not be consulted without a special order of the senate, which was never granted, unless upon the receiving some notable defeat, upon the rising of any considerable mutiny or sedition in the state, or upon some other extraordinary occasion.
The museum is a work in progress: Rooms CXXI - CXXIII of the museum shall contain the material from the excavations carried out from the seventeenth century onwards by Leopold of Bourbon, Emilio Stevens and Ettore Gabrici in the Greek cemeteries of Cuma, and later continued in the urban area mainly by Amedeo Maiuri; one of the most interesting objects is the statue of Diomedes, found in the crypt below the acropolis (section currently being prepared for display).
The goddess Hera belongs to Ionian-Greek sites [Argolis, Euboea, and the island of Samos]; in the epic traditions she invariably champions the Argives of the city Argos. The individual "states" or "kingdoms" of the Aegean and Mycenaean world at its apex are as follows: Argos, Olympia, Corinth and Megara on the Isthmus, Delphi in Phocis, Thebes in Boeotia, and Athens in Attica.
The most famous statue of Hera stood between Argos and Mycenae, fashioned of gold and ivory by Polyclitus. Her crown represented the
Graces and the Hours.
Pausanias [pp. 2, 17, 4]
The priestesses of Hera were named and recorded by the historian Hellanicus [The Priestesses of Hera in Argos] . Since no records of Mycenaean history were kept, early historians used priestesses as their reference, as in the statement, “the forty-eighth year of the priestess-ship of Chrysis at Argos.” There was no list of government officers in Sparta before 755 B.C., and none from Athens before 683 B.C. Records of Hera’s Argive temple are not much earlier, writes Sir John Forsdyke, "but the cult of Hera there was of immemorial antiquity, and the succession of priestesses may have gone back to the prehistoric age."
Sir John Forsdyke [p 37, Greece before Homer]
Plutarch also had studied an inscription "which dated mythical achievements in music and poetry by the years of Argive priestesses."
Hellanicus dated, he adds, a migration of settlers from Italy to Sicily "in the twenty-sixth year" of an Argive priestess of Hera named "Alcyone, three generations before the Trojan War, and the Fall of Troy in a certain year of a priestess Callisto".
Note: The New Age [of Aquarius] is set on a foundation that is equivalent to Aquarian archetypes, The Cup Bearer, or Water Bearer. This constellation is said to be protected by Hera.
Zeus and Here Suite by Erte
Media : Graphic Edition, Serigraph
SACRED DESTINATION
EPHESUS
One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: Temple of Diana at Ephesus
The sacred site at Ephesus was far older than the Artemisium. Pausanias understood the shrine of Artemis there to be very ancient. He states with certainty that it antedated the Ionic immigration by many years, being older even than the oracular shrine of Apollo at Didymi. He said that the pre-Ionic inhabitants of the city were Leleges and Lydians.
The temple was designed by the Greek architect Chersiphron. The Temple of Artemis housed many fine artworks. Sculptures by renowned Greek sculptors Polyclitus, Pheidias, Cresilas, and Phradmon adorned the temple, as well as paintings and gilded columns of gold and silver. The sculptors often competed at creating the finest sculpture. Many of these sculptures were of Amazons, who are said to have founded the city of Ephesus. Pliny tells us that Scopas worked carved reliefs into the temple's columns, who also worked on the Mausoleum of Mausollos.
Pliny describes the temple as 377 feet long and 180 feet wide made almost entirely of marble. The Temple consists of 127 columns, each 60 feet in height; many of which were carved decoratively. The columns were Ionic in style. Marshy ground was selected for the building site as a precaution against future earthquakes (Pliny). The temple became a tourist attraction, visited by merchants, kings, and sightseers, many of whom paid homage to Artemis in the form of jewelry and various goods. Its splendor also attracted many worshippers, many of whom formed the cult of Artemis. The temple was a widely respected place of refuge, a tradition that was linked in myth with the Amazons who took refuge there, both from Heracles and from Dionysus.
Vitruvius
For in four places only are the temples embellished with work in marble, and from that circumstance the places are very celebrated, and their excellence and admirable contrivance is pleasing to the gods themselves. The first is the temple of Diana at Ephesus, of the Ionic order, built by Ctesiphon of Gnosus, and his son Metagenes, afterwards completed by Demetrius, a priest of Diana, and Pæonius, the Ephesian. The second is the temple of Apollo, at Miletus, also of the Ionic order, built by the above-named Pæonius, and Daphnis, the Milesian. The third is the Doric temple of Ceres and Proserpine, at Eleusis, the cell of which was built by Ictinus, of extraordinary dimensions, for the greater convenience of the sacrifices, and without an exterior colonnade.
Artemis or Diana of Ephesus, worshiped across most of ancient Europe, is associated with traditional symbols of the Moon, the crescent, symbolic of Artemis [Greek goddess of the moon, wild animals and hunting], or Diana [Roman goddess of hunting and virginity], of what is yet unrevealed, the mystery of emotion, renewal, and change.
Originally there were two altars and one temple, and later two great marble temples, that rose and fell successively on the same site in Ephesus. The fourth edifice was begun in the mid-sixth century B.C., partly subsidized by fabulously wealthy King Croesus of Lydia.
The late-classical temple was probably begun about 350 B.C., and incorporated many details of the style and design of its predecessor. Before approaching the temple, visitors stood far back in the outer courtyard to admire the decorated pediment high above. Sculpted Amazons framed the entranceway, which revealed a forest of gleaming marble columns.
The Goddess is still present in her city, at least at the museum, in the guise of two strange, compelling and peculiarly awesome statues of the first and second centuries A.D. Many
museums have images of her, but Ephesus was her headquarters. At the temple stood many Kore statues. When Christianity came, Ephesus became a centre for the cult of the Virgin Mary.
visit In Search
of Diana of Ephesus
Ephesus
The last home of the Virgin
Mary in Ephesus, Turkey is an ancient place of healing, traditional teaching, and miracles. On August 15 (the Feast of the Assumption of Mary) each year, Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim clergy conduct a service together at the shrine, one of the rare occasions this happens anywhere.
The small, T-shaped stone building consists of a bedroom (on the right) and a kitchen (on the left). The interior is kept simple and austere, fitted only with an altar, images of Mary and candles.
The spring that runs under the Virgin's House is believed to have healing properties, and many miracles have been reported. Inside the house are crutches and canes said to be left behind by those who were healed by the sacred spring.
The magnificent temple of which Christian writers speak as that of "the great goddess whom all Asia and the world worshippeth" replaced the earlier and more famous shrine which burned to the ground on the night of Alexander's birth. Two hundred and twenty years had been spent in the process of building the first temple, and when this was destroyed the Ephesians at once began the construction of another even more costly. The older Artemisium is said to have possessed among its treasures four statues of Amazons executed by four of the most distinguished sculptors of the fifth century, Phidias, Polyclitus, Cresilas, and Phradmon. The tradition is only one of many which indicate very close connection between the Amazons and this sanctuary.
Apart from her name it would be difficult to recognize the Greek Artemis in the deity of Ephesus. The cult statue showed her in form at once primitive and Oriental. The original statue contained a stone [meteorite?] fallen from heaven, worn by Artemis inside her particularly lofty, towered crown.
Her statue was carved out of a block of wood, shaped like a herm in the lower part, showing the feet. The torso was that of a woman of many breasts or more probably fruit such as the apples of the Other World, the golden fruits of the Hesperides, more appropriately figuring upon her gold or ivory-and-gold cult statue. If they were not gold, then they were crimson fruits. In Greece, to the Ionian Greeks who built that Wonder of the World to house her, the sacred fruit of Artemis-Hera was always the pomegranate, that contains a several-celled reddish berry. Various cultures associate the pomegranate with blessedness, fertility, plenty, springtime, and immortality.
The image depicted on coins is that of a draped woman of many breasts, wearing a turret-crown [symbolizes gates of the city] on her head and resting either arm on a twisted column. She was served by eunuch priests, called Megabyzi, and by maidens. Presumably these priests are the same as the Essenes, whom Pausanias mentions as servitors for one year, who were bound by strict rules of chastity and required to submit to ascetic regulations of dietary and ablution. The virgins associated with them passed through three stages: Postulant, Priestess, Past-Priestess. There is nothing to indicate the length of their term of service. The Megabyzi were held in the highest possible honour, as were the Galli at Pessinus.
Clairvoyant Daughters of Philip
Philip was one of the twelve apostles. He is sometimes identified with Philip the Evangelist, who was appointed to take charge of the distribution of alms to widows. According to Acts, xxi, 9, he had four daughters who were virgin prophetesses.
* Some words are in doubt due to present condition of the text copy. DKD Trans.
For more, see
Transcriber Errors and Curious Omissions note
** The official book by the Vatican Press identifies Michelangelo's painting of Cumaea as: The "Cumaean Sibyl, face lined with age, absorbed in meditation." The Sistine paintings were unveiled on October 13, 1512, which was All Saints' Day.
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THE TROJAN WAR
