Legend of the Dragon Priestesses
Long before the temples of the male Gods and the Priestesses who channeled their voices, women were the Oracles of the Serpent and Dragon spirits.
Pythia’s name is derived from “Python” the name of Gaia’s first born, a powerful Dragon who Apollo slayed upon conquering Delphi, symbolic of the desecration of the Goddess during the dawn of patriarchy.
And yet… Her voice could not be silenced…
When Apollo slay Python, Her body fell into a great chasm, and it’s from the fumes of Her body in the deep below that Pythia channeled prophecy.
The truth is, the Oracle existed long before Apollo. Sibyls gave prophecies up in Neolithic Goddess mountain caves. And on my own pilgrimages in meditation in the Corycian Cave above Delphi, I received the vision that the original Oracle was the cave Herself, and menstruating women were Her Priesteses.
Appropriating the power of the Womb Oracles, Pythias or High Priestesses sat on snake and dragon gilded tripods, shaped like the Holy Grail.
We may never know the full story of the ancient women who channeled Gaia’s voices, but we do know from direct embodied wisdom that women’s wombs have always held the Serpentine Dragon energy of Rebirth.
The Delphic Tripod, the famous gilded throne upon which Pythia gave Her prophecies, was believed to hold magical powers.
According to legend, Heracles stole the Delphic Tripod in a rage when Pythia refused him Her prophecy.
This is a far more ancient telling of the medieval legend of the Holy Grail, where fallen kings stole the gilded cup from the Well Maidens, believing they could appropriate prophetic feminine womb power for themselves. In turn, the Earth becomes a wasteland that will one day have to be redeemed.
Today, we see how the collective demonization of the Dragon, the Snake, the Wild, is directly connected to patriarchy’s many thousand year attempt to possess the power of the WOMB.
The story of Delphi is one of the most iconic in the world for the “fall” of the Goddess Culture and the rise of the patriarchy. But Her land still holds within it the memory of a far more ancient Sacred Union… a place many of us are being called to remember now.
One night at Kastalia Spring, said to be the lair of Python, I met what I believed to be the spirit of the Dragon. The message I received was this…
Apollo never slay the Dragon. The heroes of legends all across the world didn’t either.
It was a story.
A story to make us forget. A story to make us believe that true Feminine Power could ever be conquered. In truth, this is Gaia’s power. Mother Earth.
And it pulses also inside of us.
