Pythia

High Priestess of Self

In the Greek … she was the priestess at Apollo … who transmitted the oracles. And while the legends … don't spell it out clearly … it appears that … she lent her identity to the people of early Greece … as the personal self of everyone who lived there. The Vasudeva mentions something similar in Indic text … referring to himself as the self of all. At closer examination … it reveals the nature of the … personal … in man … that which we consider is only privy to the individual.

 

In man what we therefore consider as … personal … is a most curious experience. It has only one voice … one view … that of the individual to guide it … and it becomes the subject of great inquiries with regards to the truth. But where the human personal is able to … subscribe to a learning about the world … with the coperation of the mind … it does indeed attain a large degree of self confidence about itself. 

 

We find in our reviews … that the personal has been an area of intense activity for a long time in the history of man. It comprised thoughts … that was not initially that of man … not in the way we refer to thoughts today. Such thoughts were intuitive … spontaneous … producing an expression … like a knee jerk reaction. It created a condition … that may have been viewed as simply … ' Its what I am ' … or that's a Cossack … or that's the American way … and so forth. It did not form an identification with  … rational definitions of the practice. That was to come later.

 

Today … we bring to the area of the personal … a clear sense of what we are in our human physical condition … which includes our nationality … racial profile … work skills … name … and gender. To that we add the perceptions we create rationally and objectively … of the world around us … from where we stand. It certainly is a validation of the bias of the man … in his personal condition … but that is what separates him from the rest … in his personal view.

 

Such a defining sense of ourselves … brings to the nature of the self … a new experience. The self announces itself as totally free of bias … and is not identified with any one individual view in time. Instead it subscribes to a universal … and global experience … of its ability to survive … and grow … to affirm its own identity in relation to the universe. Hence it avoids a relation to the individual personal experience at this time. Certainly it dismisses anything of the nationality … racial profile … and name.

 

It appears however … that there are other folks who have created an identification with the self … from the past. The priestess at Apollo and the priestess at the Assyrian temple to Baal … are clear examples. They lend their identity … to the father or mother in the home … who are in that way our surrogate self … with respect to our relations with the world. And that again may be transferred to divinity representatives in the world.

 

We find a curious assortment of words associated with the term … Pythia … that's ominous of the applications of the term … in the ancient world. The inhabitants at Delphi were known as Pythians … Ptah was the proverbial old man elder of the community … who was also related to the sky God. And then of course … there's Python … the dragon. Apollo was also called … Pythius … for having killed Python.

 

The experience continues into the Indic … where Pitah … means father. Pithum … is a state of being dazed and willful … with regards to issues. Pythium … is the term for madness … or possibly a divine intoxication. The Indic saying … ' Pithuku maan sumakaveh ' … translated as … to heal Pithum a man must bear the earth … or … a man must bear the burdens of the world. A Pisassa … derived from the foregoing terms … refers to a ghost … or devil … that's gone chaotic in the management of the personal self … and is viewed as a source of great destructive qualities.

 

In the Indic experience … the Assyrian priestess evolved into Kali … a mother aspect … that destroys male chauvinistic impulses … and paves the way for a reconstruction. In the West … the priestess at Apollo may have been adapted in practice to Venus … the Goddess of fertility. They are both powerful aspects of the experience of eros impulses in man … and guide its influences … to evolve a mind that is knowledge based … away from its purely animistic origins. We continue to work at this … at this time … and it is indicative of the need for further advancement of its refinement in the culture of man.

 

In bringing into review our present studies of psychology … sociology … child behavior … and scientific definitions of the individual and social self … we can't help but feel we have a long way to go. Beyond this … we encounter the suggestion … that the personal identity of an individual … is best served by the individual himself. Such a man may begin with psychology theories and the classics … but must thereafter … live his life … as a test of such principles … before he comes to truly know of their authenticity. Knowledge and personal volition … go hand in hand for the determination of what's true.

 

In much the same way … our laws and social ethos … have evolved to protect the society from chaos … by ensuring that … we get all the time in the world … to slowly sieve through … the nature of the self … in the sanctum of our … liberty … and individual rights. Any infringement of such laws … may be subject to legal prosecution. Its created the conditions … to evolve the personality of the lone man in society … which is a growing phenomenon in the world's experience. That ought to usher us all back … to the door of the personal … in our private thoughts.