Oracles of the Dead By Robert Temple

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Last night, on National Geographic Channel, I managed to catch part of a cracking documentary, 'Descent into Hell', about a subterranean oracular temple, built by ancient Greeks about 500bc, only to be filled in and sealed off by the Romans, several hundred years later. It was introduced and conducted by Robert Temple.

There's a book:
ORACLES OF THE DEAD: Ancient Techniques For Predicting The Future

http://www.newdawnbooks.info/Reviews/Oracles_Of_The_Dead.html

ORACLES OF THE DEAD
Ancient Techniques For Predicting The Future
By Robert Temple
Published by Inner Traditions/Destiny Books
480 pages, paperback, two 8-page colour inserts

Even though we have just entered the third millennium the human fascination for soothe sayers, oracles and fortune telling is as popular as ever. How many of us have not perhaps dabbled with Tarot cards, or looked at the patterns in our teacups and wondered.

Yet we know very little of this ancient and almost primordial art. Most Tarot card readers will tell you their divination system originated in Egypt, yet this is relatively a modern era. The origins of divination go back into the very mists of time, and it is on such a journey that Robert Temple takes us in his fascinating book, Oracles of the Dead.

In Oracles of the Dead we go back to the hidden and dark side of divination and the human need to understand our lives. Robert Temple personally entered many of the underground Greek Oracle caves believed lost and forgotten for more than two thousand years. In these excavations he reveals that many of the so called “myths” of the underworld, such as the river Styx, Charon the ferry man, and Ceberus, the three headed dog, were in fact actual places, people and events.

Those of us who studied the classics by Homer and other Greek writers were told by our teachers these places and events were simply fanciful myths. In his book, Robert Temple has uncovered an amazing series of caverns and caves hidden deep within the earth which prove otherwise, and the journey he takes us on is absolutely amazing.

Through his thorough research he reveals the oracles were in fact in residence under the earth, and that in order to receive guidance or a message from the Gods, people would ride the ferry boat through an underground river Styx to the chamber of the oracle. Certainly makes our modern-day theme parks and “New Age Psychic expos” pale into insignificance!

...

Reviewed by Lesley Crossingham in New Dawn No. 94

I don't know what the book's like, or the stuff about the 'I Ching' and mathematics, but the subterranean oracular complex, with its artificial River Styx, false passages and mysterious echoes looked brilliant. The sort of thing archaeologists dream of finding and exploring.

Temple's definitely onto something. The documentary's well worth looking out for. It's also due on Channel 4, sometime.

 

[Anonymous]

I didn't know temple was still going. Shame I missed the programme...

 

[Dingo667]

I'm just reading the book [which I got cheap for £1].