Seeking Truth in the Ancient World that will Help Us in This One!

I traveled to Delphi in Greece in 2016. I first heard about it when I used the so-called Delphi Technique as a financial analyst thirty years ago (it's a way of gathering expert opinion to seed financial simulations). A couple of years earlier, I happened to look at my old counterpoint text from music school and noticed its subtitle -- 'Gradus ad Parnassum' or steps of Parnassus. That's the mountain on which the Oracle did her thing. Finance and music?!?! I had to go to see how that makes sense.

So I did. And here’s what I found…

I took this picture of the amphitheater, the Temple of Apollo (where the Oracle had set up shop around 800BC), the bank, and the Steps of Parnassus in the distance, along which the warring city states erected statues to celebrate their victories (think of it as a precursor to Facebook ... made of stones rather than electrons).

For more than a thousand years, the rich and powerful traveled great distances to come to this hillside to ask the Oracle to answer their questions. And when they did, this spot, which they considered to be the mythological center of the world, became a literal crossroads between east and west. And while they came, the world experienced an unprecedented cultural flourishing that underpins much of what we know today. Put another way - their belief became their shared truth.

Famously, the pilgrims came to Parnassus to hear the Oracle's prophecies. But, the 'Big Idea' they heard when they arrived? 'Know thyself.' (You can almost hear their eye roll from across the millennia!) Next, they asked their questions. And a stoned and starving teenaged Oracle would reveal what the spirits would tell her in response. (Then, the priests of the temple 'interpreted' what she had to say.)

Strange, no?

It certainly didn’t make sense to me when I first heard about it. After all, what could explain 1,400 years of people traveling from around the world based on this crazy belief? And these were some of the smartest people in history -- Plutarch and Pericles and Aspasia (his brilliant wife), and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and even Aristotle, the father of logic! So why did they keep coming?

My guess…

People in the ancient world believed in the Oracle, but what they did was to reach beyond their provincial worlds. In this case, they left the familiarity of home so they could learn from the diverse crowd in the Oracular waiting room. They sought each other’s wisdom – each from their own cultures and experiences. And, when they did, the world flourished.

The Oracle is long gone, along with most of her belief system. So, think of it this way - as you go off into the world, what you believe may shift, but it's what you do – together – that counts; even if it's on Zoom.

And maybe someday you too can discover and travel to your own Parnassus!