V. Gilgamesh (Babylonian seal). The Gilgamesh epic contains the

oldest-known dream interpretation.
SHORT HISTORY OF THE ART OF PROPHECY 65
through the mouth of the prophet.^ Jehovah's silence was, of course, a bad omen in itself, and the conclusion that God had abandoned Saul seemed unavoidable. But Saul would not see this, and since an important military decision had to be made by him, he abandoned the path of the Law and turned to magic instead. Secretly he stole to the woman at En-dor and forced her to con- jure up the spirit of Samuel, his former adviser. And when the spirit of Samuel appeared — to the eyes of the woman and not to Saul — it was only to scold Saul for disquieting him. For this act of blasphemy, Saul was punished next day by defeat in the battle of Gilboa and by his death.
Conjuring up the dead, i.e. necromancy, was practised all over the East, and even found its way into Greek mythology as in the story of Circe's inciting Ulysses to disturb the shadows of the dead. 2 The dead alone can look clearly into the future, and can often be consulted about it. This notion, too, is probably of Mesopotamian origin, for the Babylonians had special priests who were experts in necromancy and made it possible for the living to keep in touch with their dead relatives and friends. Even so, necromancy, this darkest of all magical arts, played no major part in ancient prophecy, for the ancients respected the peace of the dead, and assured their comfort by ritual and solemn burial ceremonies, and by putting nourishment into their graves. If the dead became restless and roamed about, or came unsummoned, they generally frightened men and gave them bad dreams. True, this was prediction as well — but usually of evil things to come — and no one in his right mind would go out of his way to elicit exclusively terrifying forebodings about the future.
Egyptian mystifiers
Babylonian prophecy, no matter how many magical elements it contained, always preserved a core of S(>briety. Since prophecy was not given to all, those who knew their job were expected to practise it openly and with the minimum of mumbo jumbo. Prophecy was first given its esoteric aura by the Egyptians, who
1 1 Samuel 28, 6 fF.
2 Odyssey X, 517-534.
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turned it into a mysterious art. While they introduced far- reaching metaphysical and philosophical factors into it, they also robbed it of much of its previous lucidity.
This change was seen in the external features of the practice of their art, as well. The Egyptian diviners preferred to work in complete darkness, ostensibly because inner illumination shines forth more brightly under such conditions, but really because people are far more credulous in the dark than they are in the light of day, and much more prone to be taken in by sleights of hand. The Egyptian temples held "living" statues of the gods whose jaws could be moved by mechanical means like those of puppets, and by which the audience was deceived into believing that the gods were addressing them.
Apart from such childish deceptions, there was little that the Egyptians added to prophetic methods. Their special claim to fame was that they were masters at interpreting dreams, and nightmares in particular. Dreams, like dead spirits, had the power of plaguing the living, and the Egyptians would often consult both simultaneously by sleeping on graves.
Those dreams and dream interpretations, however, which we know from inscriptions and papyri are not distinguished by excessive imagination or originality, no doubt because the dreams in question were generally those of the reigning Pharaoh, and in his case the prophets had, of course, to be doubly circum- spect. Sometimes the gods would give the dreamer direct hints, as in the case of King Thothmes IV, who is said, as a youth, to have fallen asleep in the shadow of the Sphinx. In his dream he saw a god who promised him the throne on condition that he re-establish the god's temple and raise the great Sphinx out of the sand.^
The most famous Pharaonic dream is reported not by Egyptian sources but in the Bible. It is the story of Joseph's interpretation of Pharaoh's two dreams, which none of the official magicians could read: the dream of the seven fat and the seven lean cows, and the seven good and the seven thin ears of corn. 2 Joseph's interpretation that the dream foretold seven years of plenty and seven years of famine and his advice to lay
^ G. Contenau: La Divination chez les Assyriens et les Babyloniens,
p. 168.
2 Genesis 41, 1-36.
SHORT HISTORY OF THE ART OF PROPHECY 67
up Stores of corn, strike us as far too realistic to have been typically Egyptian. What Joseph did in fact do was to make the first recorded economic prediction of all time. It was more than mere prophecy for it involved scientific foresight and planning.
In the days of the later Pharaohs, divination came increasingly to be performed in the temples of the sun god Amon-Ra, one of whose shrines, particularly favoured by Ethiopians, was in Natopa, and another in the Lybian desert, a twelve days' journey from Memphis, the capital. The Lybian shrine, despite its geo- graphical isolation, became a place of pilgrimage, and its oracles were heralded with great pomp. Eighty priests, accom- panied by a women's choir carried a "holy ship" with a statue of the god through the streets of the temple district in festive procession and, if it was a question of selecting a high dignitary, stopped before the "right" man at the behest of the god.
This is how Alexander the Great had himself proclaimed the son of Amon-Ra, that is to say as Pharaoh. No doubt he en- countered little opposition from the priests who had already acclaimed him as their future ruler. The priests of Amon-Ra also had to deal with other problems, for instance with public prosecutions. In this case, too, the god would give his verdict by "speaking" to them in sign language, probably by means of mechanically operated arms.^
The Egyptian centre of purely astrological prediction was Heliopolis, close to Memphis and the modern city of Cairo. Unlike the Babylonians, the Egyptian took no interest in the rational part of astrology, i.e. meteorology, probably because the Nile, as it periodically flooded their country or else dried up to bring drought in its wake, told them all they needed to know about this subject. The idea of periodic phenomena entered into many of their other beliefs as well, for they held that the dead returned to human form every 3000 years, after an interval spent as beasts. Still, such long periods could hardly have played an important role in everyday prophecy.
The astrological prediction of the fate of individuals only began in earnest when the Greek city of Alexandria became the intellectual centre of Egypt. It was Egypt that provided the soil for the Tetrahiblos, Ptolemy's long treatise, which has remained
1 J. H. Breasted: Ancient Records of Egypt (Chicago 1906-1907) Vol. IV, p. S28.
68 CHAPTER 1
the bible of astrologers to this day. Ptolemy (ca a.d. 150) was also a great scientific astronomer, whose Almagest and Syntax remained the foundations of astronomy until Copernicus over- threw the Ptolemaic cosmic picture 1500 years later. In astrology on the other hand, Ptolemy was not a great innovator, for what he mainly did was to record and to systematise current beliefs about the influence of the stars on the earth and on man.
The Greeks
Greek love for astrology was a relatively late development, and was the last stage on a thousand years' road of prophecy. Many historians have tried to explain the Greeks' preoccupa- tion with prophetic matters by their belief in the Fates, but this explanation does not stand up to closer scrutiny. The Greeks were far too logical a people to have combined fatalistic faith with a need for prophecy: fatalists can afford to wait. But then the Greeks were never real fatalists, and though philosophers and poets exhorted them to look at the future with equanimity, they never learnt to accept what was in store for them with Stoic peace of mind. Even when the oracle had revealed the future, they would try to temper it by prayers, sacrifices, good deeds, and even by deception. Thus the fight against fate is a typical Greek attitude, and gave rise to their tragedies and great dramas on the stage and in real life.
If we speak of Greek fatalism, we must first of all define the term, for to the Greeks the term "fate" meant two distinct things. On the one hand, it was the moral belief that transgressions were punished by the gods, not only on the perpetrators but also on their children and children's children, and even on a whole nation. Thus individual crimes could involve innocent bystanders, and each man bore a grave responsibility for his fellow men, and particularly for his descendants. True, not even in ancient Greece was it a crime to be a murderer's son, but it was recognised that sin can set off a chain reaction, since the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance, would involve the sinner's children in new crimes, thus justifying the punishment meted out to them.
These moral involvements emerge most strikingly in the
SHORT HISTORY OF THE ART OF PROPHECY 69
tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Although they were generally based on ancient myths — for instance the fate of Orestes or of Oedipus — it was no accident that they were written in the fifth century b.c, i.e. at the time of the Persian wars and the consolidation of Athenian democracy: the story of the fate of the mythical kings of Mycenae and Thebes was a simile about the banished Athenian nobles who ceaselessly conspired with the enemies of Athens, thus adding to their own onus of guilt.
On the other hand, Greek fatalism involed a belief in moira, the kind of inexplicable fate which often seems mere blind accident. Moira is essentially amoral and beyond human logic. The Greeks, like all people who think about the world, realised that not everything can be explained by logic, and Homer even placed moira above the gods, including Zeus himself. The symbol of moira was the lottery, for in the lottery of fate there are black and white lots, and not even Zeus Moiragetes, the ruler of fate, can do better than draw lots, if he is to be fair, and distri- bute man's share of luck and misfortune without fear or favour.
The more democratic Athens became, the greater grew the importance of moira, for once one assumes that all citizens are equal, it is exceedingly difficult to bestow offices of state on anybody. Thus not only the jury, but also all ministers, members of the senate, and (since 457 b.c.) the Archontes were chosen by lot.
Cleromancy, i.e. divination by lot, also played a very im- portant role in Greek prophecy. Cleromancy was, in fact, an old established Greek custom, the throw of dice, bones, or coloured pebbles having for long played the part of arbiter in arguments and difficult decisions. Lithology — divination by throwing stones — was later replaced in popular esteem by the drawing of beans on which names or alternative choices were written beforehand. This method was also used for selecting candidates for public office.
But in the case of far-reaching decisions, the throwing of lots was usually left to professional prophets who, since they were inspired by the gods, were thought to be specially fitted to this task. Apparently, the priests did not take kindly to this role, for not only did they deem such primitive methods unworthy of the true prophet, but they also considered them too "objective".
70 CHAPTER 1
They much preferred to rely on the far vaguer pronouncements of the temple priestesses. Still, the people insisted, and in the end the prophets had to comply. ^ Wherever there were oracles — in Dodona, in Delphi, or in Olympia — the lot was consulted, and the Delphic Pythia, in particular, would keep a store of beans in her tripod.
The Delphic Oracle
The Pythia had always been a "medium" whose trance-like inarticulate sounds were understood by no-one but the priests. Now she was expected to play the part of a mere lottery super- visor, whose main function it was to draw lots, albeit in a trance. 2 (Plates IX and X).
Although there is no conclusive evidence that the Pythia entered a state of trance before pronouncing any oracle whatso- ever, ancient records, from Heraclitus to Plutarch, attach great significance to her states of ecstasy. According to popular belief, this state of divine intoxication was quite naturally enhanced by the very geographical position of the shrine at Delphi — originally the altar of Gaia, the Mother of the Earth. It lay on the slopes of Parnassus, above a hole in the ground from which sulphur fumes sent forth an everlasting evil smell, later said to have emanated from the rotting corpse of the dragon Typhon. This may be borne out by the term "Pythia", for, in Greek, "pythein" means "to decay". (On the other hand Pytho, Delphi's original name, may have been derived from "pynthanomai" — "to ask".) The Pythia sat on her tripod in a subterranean chamber, the Adyton, through which a holy fountain, the Cassotis, was said to flow. Excavations have shown that, at least in later times, the Cassotis was, in fact, a man-made canal. ^ Clearly, things were so arranged in Delphi that the Pythia and her petitioners were surrounded with impressive mysteries.
At first, oracles were pronounced no more than once a year, on the seventh day of Bysios (February-March), Apollo's
* G. Contenau: La Divination, Chapter III.
' Pierre Amandry: La mantique apollinienne a Delpbes. (Thesis,
Sorbonne 1950).
8 Marie Delcourt: L' Oracle de Delpbes (Paris 1955) p. 43.
SHORT HISTORY OF THE ART OF PROPHECY 71
birthday, but, as the stream of petitioners grew bigger, oracles came to be given on the seventh day of every month. In the interval, the Pythia probably made less solemn prophecies by lot, but not even this increase in activity could satisfy the quest of the ever growing stream of visitors. Two Pythias and at the height of the season even three Pythias, had to be used to satisfy the demands of princes or their ambassadors alone. In urgent cases, special sessions were held. Oracles were very expensive, and though satisfied customers would shower impres- sive presents on the Pythia, presents alone proved inadequate to cover the costs. For this reason, a fixed minimum tariff was introduced, and those who required an urgent oracle had to pay a special priority fee, the "promanteia".
So as not to turn the oracle into an exclusive privilege of the rich, a mass oracle was held once every year, not in the darkness of the Adyton, but in broad daylight. The Pythia would sit down unceremoniously on the temple steps to answer the people's questions. The priests, who normally commented on her pro- nouncements, did not participate in this mass oracle, and so the Pythia's answers lost most of their value, as the commentaries were an integral part of all real oracles and, in difficult cases, probably the most important part. Homer wrote that true prophets inspire the priests to pronounce oracles. ^ This may strike us as the direct opposite of what happened at Delphi, though even in Delphi the priest-interpreters were called prophets. In any case, even in Homer's time there was a clear division: the prophet or prophetess revealed the will of the god, and others attached to the temple made it known.
In Delphi, and probably elsewhere in Greece also, the priests' job was not merely to communicate the oracle literally or to put it into verse — the oracles recorded on stone tablets are, in any case, all in prose — ^but to interpret it very skilfully and shrewdly. The priests were not expected to have "second sight" like, for instance, the Pythia who told the ambassadors of King Croesus that their master was this very hour preparing a soup of mutton and turtle in Sardes, his capital, ^ but they had to be well- informed and were often called upon to answer the most com- plicated political questions. For rulers and town officials, at 1 Iliad, XVI, 235. * Herodotus: History I, ^T.
72 CHAPTER 1
least, Delphi was not merely a mystical source of prophecy, but a hive of political activity, for they knew that its priests were in touch with all the world. Thus, from the very way foreigners formulated their questions, the priests could often deduce their real intentions.
Delphic priests were generally of noble descent, and their office was frequently handed down from generation to genera- tion. By and large they were conservative in outlook, and thus closer to Sparta than to liberal Athens. Nor were they opposed to imperialist exploits, and their great political skill was, no doubt, a decisive factor in colonising Southern Italy. Though they were called defeatists and even traitors for having tried to dissuade Greece from waging what eventually turned out to be a successful war against the Persians, theirs had nevertheless been the well-considered advice of elder statesmen.
Prophetesses
While the priests were highly educated people, the Pythia her- self was an illiterate woman of the people. She was therefore not expected to be particularly intelligent but had to be morally beyond reproach. For many centuries the Pythias were young virgins, but after a particularly attractive Pythia was abducted, the office was increasingly entrusted to elderly women. But no matter whether young or old, the Pythia had to be celibate, for carnal knowledge of men might make her too worldly and could decrease her divine powers of inspiration.
It is most odd that, in Greece, where women normally lived such retired lives, it was they who were chosen for the high office of official prophet. Women were otherwise not allowed to enter the Adyton, and had to put their questions to the Pythia through male intermediaries. This strange contradiction is no Greek peculiarity, for amongst Israelites, too, where women were almost completely excluded from the religious life, prophetesses were held in high regard. The most famous of them, Deborah, was even made a judge. In Egypt, priest-prophetesses were among the highest state dignitaries, and in Babylonia and other countries of the Near East, prophetesses were a common
SHORT HISTORY OF THE ART OF PROPHECY 73
phenomenon. According to an Arab legend, man's prophetic gift was handed to him by Zaripha — a prophetess. Clearly, the ancients believed that women were more receptive to inspiration — on condition that they renounced their sexuality.
The fame of Delphi lasted for over a thousand years, ^ but began to decline after Euripides had launched his great attack on it. From the fourth century b.c. onwards, the critics grew more and more vociferous. In late Roman times, a fresh, if abortive, attempt was made to burnish Delphi's fading renown: Plutarch (a.d. 49 to 120) was appointed High Priest of Delphi. In the end, however, all Plutarch could do was to bewail the decline of the Oracle in elegant phrases. The gods had simply ceased to reveal themselves. Even the Pythia would occasionally refuse her services, and, on one occasion, the people were forced to pour cold water over a prophetic goat so that it would speak to the reluctant Pythia. ^ But all was in vain, the oracle had lost its power, and the people knew it.
Not that they had become less credulous or less superstitious ; it was merely that their credulity had assumed different forms. Despite bitter opposition from the most important Greek astronomers — Eudoxus and later Carneades, the founder of the New Athenian Academy — the Greeks, persuaded by Pytha- gorean number myths, had become converted to astrology. Astrology had a patron saint in Aristotle, behind whose authority it was to shelter for 2000 years both in the Christian and the Arab world. While Plato had still held fast to the old forms of prediction and had even stressed the importance of the Delphic Oracle in his model state of the future, his pupil Aristotle asserted that the earth was governed by the motions of a superior world.
Thus the door was opened wide to astrology. The Alex- andrian wars brought Babylonian and Greek astrologers into closer contact, and on the island of Cos, the seat of the famous medical school which produced the great Hippocrates, the Babylonian priest Berosus founded an institute for the study of oriental astronomy and astrology. ^ Chaldean astrologers began
1 H. W. Parke: A History of the Delphic Oracle (Oxford, 1939).
2 Plutarch: On the decline of the Oracles, 51.
^ P. Schnabel: Berossos und die habyloniscb-hellenistische Literatw (Leipzig 1923).
74 CHAPTER 1
to come to Athens in growing number and were revered as if they were the harbingers of a new message of salvation. Really adventurous Greeks would go to Mesopotamia in order to be in more direct touch with the true sources of wisdom. Since the Greeks were better mathematicians than the Chaldeans they soon outstripped their masters. It was in Mesopotamia that Hipparchus made a major contribution towards turning astro- nomy into an exact science by cataloguing the stars into six classes according to their brightness and "size". Hipparchus was a master of astrology, as well, and it was from him that Ptolemy and later astrologers derived much of their wisdom.
The Romans
The Romans owe far less to the Greeks in the sphere of pro- phetic wisdom than in most other fields. Their methods of prediction came either direct from the Orient, or else across Etruscan by-paths. Rome never had an oracle of Delphic importance, and the legendary Sibyl of Cumae in Etruria was probably of Asian origin. It was the Sibyl of Cumae who was said to have pronounced the traditional collections of oracles kept in the Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which were consulted before any great decision was made. Of Etruscan origin also was the prophetic method used in Roman temples, viz. prophecy from the intestines of sacrificial animals [hostiae consultatoriae) . The priests, who determined which animals were fit to be used for this exalted purpose and who consulted the entrails, were called Haruspices — inspectors of sacrifices or of entrails — according to whether we derive the word haruspex from harviga or from hira. In principle, the method was very similar to that used in ancient Babylon, except that new medical knowledge was increasingly introduced into the predictions. Apart from the liver, which was the chef d'oeuvre of the Roman Haruspices as well, they also "consulted" five other organs — the so-called exta — about the future: the spleen, the kidneys, the lungs and — since Pliny's contribution in 274 b.c. — the heart. In later times astrological ideas, too, were introduced into entrail- prediction. Thus, an Etruscan bronze liver discovered in Pia-
SHORT HISTORY OF THE ART OF PROPHECY 75
13. Bronze Liver from Piacenza. Etruscan model for hepatoscopic predictions (300-200 b.c).
cenza (Italy) in 1877, and dating back to the second or third century b.c, resembled the astrological implements of the time. In addition, every part of the liver was governed by a special god and by different elements (water, fire, earth, and air).^
The Haruspices were an organised body of soothsayers and were highly respected specialists, even though they were never as influential in Rome as their counterparts in Babylon. Since most of them came from Etruria they were called Etruscans, and Etruscans were considered to be good Romans, unlike Chaldean astrologers and Oriental soothsayers who, despite their acknow- ledged superiority, were persecuted as foreigners from time to time. Thus in 139 b.c, under Cornelius Hispalus, all Chaldeans were driven from Rome. Subsequently, the emperors Augustus, Domitian, and Hadrian passed edicts against them but other men of rank like the Gracchi, Sulla, and Julius Caesar were believers in astrology, and the emperors Tiberius, Nero, Otho, and Vespasian appointed Chaldean court astrologers. Under the Emperor Alexander Severus (a.d. 223-235), who was of Phoenician origin, astrology became an official Roman science, with a special school and with state subsidies.
Still, the greatest Roman contribution to the art of prophecy,
^ G. Koerte: Die Bronzeleber von Piacenza. Transact. Germ. Arch. Inst. (Roman section) Vol, XX (1905) pp. 348-379.
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was a negative one: Cicero and Pliny the Elder were the first to muster arguments which are used against astrology to this day. They pointed out that the planets were too far from the earth to have perceptible influence on human beings ; that astrologers were often robbed and even murdered without having had any foreknowledge of such attacks ; that twins born under the same star would have to have identical fates, which was far from being the case ; that of those born at the same hour some become rich while others become beggars. It was Pliny, also, who first remarked how odd it was that the stars were supposed to exert their influence at the moment of birth rather than at the moment of conception.
The end of the world
Christianity put an end to all the prophetic methods which savoured of heathen rites, of oracles, or of Haruspices. The Druids, too, were forbidden to prophesy from the rustling of the leaves. Everything that smacked of magic — black or white — was eradicated. But astrology managed to survive even this holocaust, and St. Augustine, who had consulted astrologers in his own youth, was forced to exclaim in despair: "No art at all is involved in soothsaying, and only accident makes some of its predictions come true."^ Though the Church fulminated against astrological superstitions and insisted that there was no need to defer marriage or the building of new houses until the new moon, she never pronounced a formal condemnation of astrology. The reason why astrology, nevertheless, fell into decline for cen- turies, was not so much because of Church opposition, as because of the decline of the mathematical knowledge needed for understanding such astrological works as Ptolemy's Tetrabihlos. Astrology had fallen into the hands of the commonest swindlers. More serious astrologers took refuge in the courts of the East. For a time, Persia became the home of this Greek science, and helped it to spread across the entire Arab world. Some astrology also reached the South directly from Mesopotamia, but on its journey it had accumulated so much dust and rubbish that the results of the astrological "renaissance" in ninth century
^ St. Augustine, Confessions, Book VII, Chapter 6.
SHORT HISTORY OF THE ART OF PROPHECY
77
14. Ancient Arab Zodiac.
Arab learning were, in many respects, vastly inferior to those of the much older Greek astrology. While Ptolemy had realised that the fixed stars, too, must affect terrestrial events if there was anything to astrology at all, the Arabs fell back on the primitive Babylonian idea that the planets alone governed man's fate. Cosmogenetic predictions, too, became more primitive. Thus Albumazar or Abu-Maaschar (a.d. 805-885) "calculated" that the Creation had occurred "when the seven planets were in con- junction in the first degree of Aries" and announced further that the end of the world would coincide with a similar conjunc- tion "in the last degree of Pisces."
These prophecies, because of the time involved, are of course wild and fancy-free, but the Arabs insisted on great accuracy in short-range predictions. Albategnius, or Al-Battan (a.d. 850- 929), a brilliant mathematician, was the first to introduce "houses" into astrology, thus making it possible to consult charts from which every man's future could be read off precisely once
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his birthday was known. Horoscopes, i.e. predictions based on the hour, or, short of that, on the day of birth, had been cast for a thousand years before, the first detailed horoscopes having been composed in Greece, in about 250 b.c. But the Greek system had been laborious and unreliable. From now on, there was a system that everyone could master and test for himself. The Arab system of houses, with many innovations and different innuendos — ^for astrologers are notoriously given to vacillation — sub- sequently became the basis of Western astrological predictions.
At first, the West had pre-occupations of its own. Hell had been painted so hot, that miserable sinners everywhere feared the Day of Judgement like the plague. The Day of Judgement was expected at any moment, and only numerology could reveal the exact date. Numbers, and beginnings of centuries and of millenia were either lucky or unlucky, and played an hitherto unsuspected role in man's fate.
As the year a.d. 1000 approached, this faith turned into collective anxiety, for some passages in Revelation seemed to indicate that the end of the world would come on that date. There were other dark omens, as well: in 992, Good Friday fell on Lady Day, a most disastrous coincidence. Many numero- logists were convinced that the world would end in the year 995.^ Fortunately that year passed by uneventfully, but the fear remained. An eclipse of the sun, an extraordinarily severe winter, pestilence, an eruption of Vesuvius, Magyar, Norman and Saracen invasions were further portents of inevitable disaster.
True, similar misfortunes had happened in earlier times, as well, but now the number 1000 oppressed Europe like a night- mare. A wave of fatalism seized the people: the great cataclysm was about to engulf the world and mankind was powerless to do anything about it. All that could be done was to offer fervent prayers, though it seemed unlikely that even prayers could avail as the dreaded moment approached. Whole towns repaired to church as one man, or assembled round crucifixes under the open sky, there to await God's judgement on corporately bended knees. When nothing happened, fear was quickly forgotten, but neither belief nor superstition suffered any damage — a strange human phenomenon that was to be repeated time after time.
Barely two hundred years later, false prophecies caused a new 1 Paul Villiaud: La Fin du Monde (Paris 1952) p. 94 f.
16. The end of the world as seen by Scheuchzer in his Physica Sacra
(1734).
80