Pythia - in ancient Greece, a priestess - a soothsayer of the Delphic oracle in the temple of Apollo in Delphi, located on the slope of Mount Parnassus.
They were not taken to the Pythia under 50. Well, it's true - what can be understood in life and what to prophesy about if you have not raised children, and you yourself have not really lived yet … however, the legend says that even earlier young virgins were taken to the Pythia.
But besides age, one still had to possess something that only the priests of Apollo could catch. There are no special qualities in you - you cannot be a pythia. The one to whom people flock to the famous and beautiful city of Delphi, named after the symbol of Apollo - the dolphin. By the way, the first pythia was the daughter of Apollo (femono), she became the first prophetess, and she uttered her prophecies in hexameters, which is also not easy.
And then the candidates had to go through a whole ceremony: fasting, ablutions, rituals in an underground room, which one can only guess about, and they also had to drink water from the Castal and Kassoti sacred springs, and chew laurel leaves. Bay leaf has a lot of original properties, but this is hardly the only explanation for the fact that the Pythias fell into a trance. In addition, the Pythias had to inhale poisonous vapors that escaped from a deep crevice.
In this trance, divine phrases were pronounced in the form of inarticulate fragmentary babble, these phrases were already interpreted by the priests.
Nevertheless, wars, and weddings, sacrifices and travel, and everything - all the most important things in life happened as predicted by the Pythias. People listened to them.
Pythagoras was named after the Pythia, who predicted his birth in Delphi, because Pythagoras got his name, which means "the one about whom Pythia announced."
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