It can seem fantastical to imagine a time when our world leaders received their guidance and direction from a woman in an underground temple sitting on top of a gilded dragon carved throne…

But that’s exactly what countless historians, philosophers, and poets once documented about Pythia… the legendary Oracle of Delphi, the most influential woman of the ancient mediterranean world.

In a time when women could not own property, acquire their own wealth, or even vote in systems of democracy, emperors, kings, and politicians were literally brought to their knees to receive Pythia’s prophecies.

Perched on a high pelvic shaped throne called “the Delphic Tripod”, chewing daphne leaves and spiraling into transcendental visions, uttering cryptic, koan-like streams of consciousness, Pythia predicted the outcomes of wars, gave leaders political directions, and offered guidance for retribution to make an empire rise again after its fall.

And here’s what’s utterly fundamental for us all to remember…

She wasn’t special.
She didn’t have anything that doesn’t belong to you or me.
And she also wasn’t one woman.
She was countless women across the span of millenia.

Perhaps most important to remember, is that what we know of Pythia has been documented by the voices of men, privileged men, who could only see her through their own lens.

So to truly understand who Pythia really was, as women we must return to the Source of where she channeled from within ourselves…

The Oracles in our Wombs.

Priestesses in the Time of Patriarchy

Pythia was not a name, but a title. It was the title given to the women chosen to be the voices for Apollo, the reigning male God.

Pythia’s prophecies, in a time of women’s oppression, were so influential not because of who she was, but because she was believed to have direct access to the voice of Apollo, overriding the “inferior” position she inherited by product of her female body.

These women were chosen as young local girls, and it was a position that was held for life. They were virgin maidens, pre-pubescent girls essentially prostituted by their families to give their chastity (and in turn their sexuality) to the temples.

What they relinquished in freedom… a life of relationships, marriage, and motherhood… they gained in accolades… wealth, notoriety, and a sense of purpose.

It’s devastating to consider that women’s choices came down to this:

To be a wife and a mother under the eye of your husband and his family
To be an oracle and a priestess under the eye of the temple and the Gods

Which would you have chosen?
Which do you think you chose?

The truth is, these girls didn’t choose. What pre-pubescent girl has the capacity or ability to choose? Her parents and the culture chose.

But there’s something the Pythias did have… the feeling and the notion that they were special.

That they were chosen. Not only by the temple. But by God. And so it’s no wonder that one of the most insidious and unconscious shadows in the New Age movement of Priestesses is this:

Superiority, hierarchy, jealousy, and gatekeeping in the name of the “sacred” as a mask for a far deeper sister wound… when women were divided by being “chosen” or “unchosen” to serve as Priestesses in times of women’s oppression.

So Pythias gave their sex to the temple in exchange for the privileges it bestowed them.

They had to be virgins to be “pure” enough to be open vessels for Apollo’s light, and this was a term they served for life. But much like the Vestal Virgins of Rome, that vow of chastity was often broken.

According to legend, a soldier from Thessaly fell in love with a Pythia, kidnapped and raped her, leading to the end of the maiden Pythias. This story reminds me of the biblical telling of Dina, said to have been raped by a Canaanite prince, which Anita Diamant re-writes through a feminist lens in her iconic book The Red Tent as a consensual love affair horrifically thwarted by her own brothers.

It’s reasonable to imagine that Pythias may have suffered both by rape and by unrequited love affairs they could never fully actualize due to their position within the temple.

In the aftermath of the rape of the Pythia, the temple allegedly changed their selection process to exclusively post-menopausal women, perhaps due to a cultural belief that women beyond their fertile years were no longer sexual or that men did not desire them… or perhaps also because of the recognition of the tremendous oracular capabilities of the season of the Crone.

Ultimately, whether a maiden or a crone, the hallmark of Pythia was in her chastity in the name of Apollo, the male God. Her sex belonged to him rather than to herself.

But here’s what’s really interesting, and really important to understand…

Pythia’s title has nothing to do with the name Apollo. It is directly derived from Python, the Dragon child of Gaia, Mother Earth, who legends say ruled Delphi before Apollo came and slayed the Dragon.

Pythia was the Priestess of the Python, the Wild Feminine, Shakti, the Dragon Serpent who once guarded the land as the protectress of Gaia Herself. And there’s no symbol that has personified women’s sexuality since the dawn of creation more than the snake.

Apollo & The Fall of the Goddess Culture

Twin brother to Artemis, son of Zeus and Leto, born on the island of Delos who emerged from the sea of Itea carried by dolphins up to Delphi, Apollo was the ultimate representation of the masculine. He was order over chaos. Logic over intuition. Light over darkness. And civilization over the wild.

Where Artemis was the moon, Apollo was the sun. Associated with shepherds, he was likely a reinvention of the ancient Egyptian Osiris, and a precursor to Jesus. Like both of these Gods who descended to the Underworld (symbolic of their lover’s womb - Isis for Osiris, Magdalene for Jesus), Apollo would repent in a cave every winter before his rebirth, marked by the return of the cicadas.

But Apollo is not the original deity of Delphi.

We know from ancient accounts and iconography that before Apollo there were the Goddess Cults of Gaia. Before the Pythias were the Sibyls who channeled prophecies from deep inside of mountain caves. And Pythia herself was called the Delphic Bee, connecting her to the Melissae Priestesses who received their divination through the spirits of bees.

Bees were the invisible connectors who the ancient Greeks observed were the secret orchestrators of all of Gaia’s blossoming. They lived together in hives and formed nectar in the darkness. As pollinators they did (and still do) quite literally weave the fabric of life on Earth.

Apollo’s own oracular ability is said to have come from the Thriae, three virginal sisters who lived in the Corycian Cave above Delphi with the heads of women and bodies of bees, and taught Apollo the art of prophecy.

And it’s believed the greatest source of divination in Delphi itself was a deep chasm that released fumes that caused humans and animals to fall into a state of trance. This chasm held within it an enormous serpent, whose body seemed to create the fumes itself.

While Delphi became synonymous with a male God, its original prophetic Source was Gaia, Her bee nymphs, Her dragons, Her pythonesses, and the women who worshipped Her.

When Apollo rose from the sea of Itea, he slay the Python in an act described in countless mythologies all across the world. The moment the hero conquers the beast, the dragon, and ultimately the Feminine.

The snake is one of the most ancient symbols of the Goddess.
The Dragon is a fierce expression of feminine power that emerges from the Earth.

Apollo conquering Python was a direct metaphor for the conquership of the Feminine by the Masculine. Thus the fall of the Goddess cults of Gaia, and the rise of the male God.

Delphi as The Womb

Isn’t it ironic then, that the name Delphi comes from the root word delphys which means WOMB?

In ancient Greek mythology, Delphi is the birthplace of civilization, where the Omphalos, the great Cosmic Egg was dropped by two falcons sent by Zeus from opposite ends of the Earth. An ancient Omphalos stone remains in the Delphi museum today, wrapped in a hexagonal bee-hive like sleeve, appearing like strands of overlapping DNA.

Beyond the patriarchal overlay, we can acknowledge as a biological reality, all life does indeed come from the womb, and the womb is ultimately the source of civilization because every man, king, emperor, priest, and even God came through the womb of a woman or a Goddess.

Apollo’s own birth story is highly traumatic, where his mother is cursed by the wrath of Goddess Hera for her husband Zeus’ infidelity and consequent impregnation of Apollo’s mother Leto. This curse makes it impossible for Leto to give birth anywhere on land or sea, until the island of Delos in the Aegean is created by the Gods as a loophole so Leto can birth the sacred twins.

When Leto first attempted to give birth in Delphi, it was Python who chased her away by the instructions of Hera, which caused Apollo to return to Delphi and slay Python in revenge.

But let’s unpack the patriarchal narrative in this story.

Firstly, we see women and Goddesses punished through the selfish acts of the male Gods. Hera, Leto, and ultimately Python. Hera was the Goddess of marriage, motherhood, pregnancy, childbirth, and ultimately the womb. So why was she the one punishing the mortal woman Leto?

Remember, these ancient stories were written by men. They were men’s interpretations of women and our cyclical sexual realities. In ancient patriarchal timelines, men saw womb initiations as dangerous and terrifying, and demonized menstruation as an abomination. Men’s attitudes about the nature of the womb is reflected in their stories.

But here in our bodies and in the land we can see the simplicity of what the womb really represents…

Life.
Fertility.
Regeneration.
Rebirth.
Transformation.
Sanctuary.
Power.
Creation.

If Delphi was once the sanctuary of Gaia, the womb that created every-body and every living thing on this Earth, it was her child, Shakti, the Wild Feminine, the Serpent, the Snake, that brought life force and animation.

Her Priestesses, the Pythias, were the ones who knew how to listen and act as intermediaries.

I imagine that when the cults of Apollo overtook Delphi and the cults of Gaia, they knew they still needed emissaries of the voices of the land. That’s why the Pythias who were chosen must be local women. Because their relationship to the land spirits still lived on in their blood.

The Source of Feminine Prophecy

Much debate has unfolded over the past century surrounding the true source of Pythia’s prophetic utterances, and her entering into a state of trance. The most popular theories remain that she chewed daphne (bay) leaves that released linalool which created a trance-like effect or that she inhaled the fumes from the chasm in the Earth.

Whether substances were involved or not, let’s zoom out and consider…

Haven’t women always had direct access to extra-sensory perception that for thousands of years has been labeled “lunacy”?

Yes… lunatics… mad women… whose label comes from the root word “luna” the MOON. Our capacity to be moved by the moon. Our ability to bleed and die without dying, and be reborn through the ebbs and flows of the dark and full moon.

The first time I made my pilgrimage in this lifetime to Delphi, I met two young Greek women in a cafe who shared with me that in high school they learned Pythia was nothing more than “a junkie” or “a fraud.” She either was high on opiates (which maybe she was) or she followed the orders of the temple to tell travelers whatever they wanted to hear to acquire more wealth, likened to a “hotline psychic.”

While Greece may be associated with Goddesses, Gods, myths, and legends, today it is overwhelmingly Christian and has operated under the influence of the Greek Orthodox Church since the 1st century.

Guiding a women’s retreat on a small island in the Ionian, I was ridiculed by both the English retreat center owner and my local Greek neighbor, for believing that Pythia’s prophecies were more than political trickery and that springs actually can speak. After all, the oracle became the priesthood, and eventually man made technology took its place.

But whatever was happening in the temples during an already corrupt patriarchal age, whatever substances Pythia was or was not ingesting, the reality remains…

Women channeling prophecy to shape the course of humanity has been happening since the beginning of time. And it isn’t a symptom of “magical thinking”... it’s actually our biological reality.

As we know, hormonal changes happen in our bodies throughout the duration of our life cycle as women - through menarche, menstruation, pregnancy, birth, and menopause - influencing what happens inside of our brains in tandem with what’s happening inside of our wombs.

Scientific research shows that as women we experience brain changes throughout the cycle that naturally draw us inward during menstruation and expand us outward during ovulation.

In the luteal phase the amygdala becomes highly reactive, increasing our sensitivity to emotions and thus “switching on” our feminine brain. (No wonder we want to burn down the world that forces us to operate only in the masculine brain when we’re pre-menstrual!)

And any woman who has consciously descended to the Underworld inside of herself during her own bleed, will know how it can completely lift the veil to the innermost temple where the source of feminine prophecy reveals itself from within.

The Most Ancient Oracles Were Menstruating Women

In 2024 when I followed a calling to spend three months living in the mountains of Delphi at the seat of Pythia, to receive deeper gnosis beyond research and scholarship, directly from the voices of the land, I was guided to make many pilgrimages to the Corycian Cave.

This cave, with evidence of Goddess worship since at least 4000 BC, sits in the Parnassus National Park, up a moss covered forest trail over Delphi, with an enormous cathedral and stalagmite ceiling, and limestone that shimmers like fine glitter.

Alone, 45 minutes up a mountain in the middle of nowhere, on my first pilgrimage I brought red roses, red apples, water from the spring in Delphi, and prayers from our Awakening Aphrodite circle to the center of the cave to speak aloud on behalf of the Feminine.

With my Mary Magdalene drum I sounded with the cave’s acoustics… “We are the women, we’ve come to drum, we are the channel between the Earth and the sun, we hold the wisdom of the ancient ways, we will bring peace to these troubled days.”

Speaking aloud our Aphrodite prayers, I sobbed ancestral tears as deep pulsating waves moved from the root of my body across the floor of the cave. It was freezing, which I hadn’t predicted in the peak summer of July, amplifying the shaking as I felt something enormous move deep in the Earth of myself in tandem with Gaia.

Departing the cave and descending the trail back to my car, I felt lifetimes lighter. Something deep had shifted.

Weeks later, just before the 8-8 Lion’s Gate I invited my Greek American priestess friend Elyse Wells of Seeking Numina to join me. Without prior coordination we each brought our own complementary offerings and gifts: me a spool of naturally dyed red yarn and a vessel of Kastalia water, her a light to see in the darkness and special rope incense to burn with no trace left behind.

We anointed one another at the gateway of the cave in the August Greek summer heat, with the glass jar of Kastalia water I had lugged up the mountain, before pouring water onto the Earth in gratitude and request of permission. Elyse played her frame drum as we slowly descended into the cave’s dark womb, sounds of goat bells in the distance.

Inside of the stone spiral, an ode to the early Neolithic Goddess cults who once worshiped there, Elyse and I burned incense and shared our intentions with one another. Suddenly, the light at the opening of the cave went dark. One, three, five, ten, dozens of goats stood at the opening as guardians, keeping a distance, watching over us, sealing our space.

We ascended to the back of the cave to the place Elyse believed the original Sibyls must have once prophesied. Indeed stories remain of a time when the Pythias were abducted from the far recesses of the cave and were brought to the temples of Apollo after he slayed Python who was their protector.

Sitting in the darkness, a vision came into view. I saw us. Many of us. We were sitting in circles. Cloaked in red garments. Seated in divination. We were oracles.

Spiraling further in time it became even simpler. We were no longer priestesses. We were everyday women. We were sisters, lovers, mothers, daughters, wives, and ultimately children of Nature. We were bleeding on the Earth.

The message came to me…

The original oracles were menstruating women.
And the first Sibyl was the cave Herself.
The womb of Gaia.

As we know, in matriarchal indigenous societies bleeding women were and are considered womb oracles. For the Inuits it’s a time of heightened intuition. For the Iroquois it’s a time of strengthened spirituality. In Aboriginal myth the time of menstruation connects women with the “Rainbow Serpent” of Creation. And the Maya listened to the dream oracles of bleeding women.

Pythia after all is often depicted in red.

One of the most widespread modern practices for receiving oracular insight today is meditation. The idea of stillness as the portal to clarity, to know through not knowing, has been popularized through Buddhist and Yogic traditions. But what if these very systems themselves were actually based far more deeply in the natural cyclicality of what our wombs have always known?

Menstruation is the ultimate stillness. It is the death moment. It is the portal into the place that literally bridges the worlds where souls are incarnated into form.

Could it be that men disappearing to meditate in caves for thousands of years in India, and spiritual practitioners today going on silent retreats, traces much further back to a far more primordial, and ultimately more powerful truth of what happens when women enter into ceremony while bleeding?

My Story as an Oracle

In my 20s when I began a wild winding journey of traveling the world alone with nothing but a backpack, while devoutly studying yoga and meditation in tandem with animistic spiritual practices from many of the communities where I lived, I noticed something…

When I slowed down and listened, immersed myself alone in a wild landscape, turned off my brain with full presence, and gave myself permission to trust completely… I could hear the voices of the land.

I received visions that later were affirmed as historically sound through research. And I could see and sense into the lifetimes that reconnected me to these bodies of land now, to reawaken more layers of my soul herstory on this planet.

Living in the jungle of Costa Rica from 2012 to 2018, when internet was scarce and there was nothing more than a one lane road, I felt Gaia’s heartbeat as my own. My connection to truth, vision, guidance, and knowing was inextricably connected to the land.

But in 2018 when through a traumatic event I left that jungle life behind, I felt profoundly disconnected. PTSD left me feeling like a ghost woman, and terrified to return to the life I had once loved, I could no longer Source my spiritual connection from that place.

Trying to make sense of my own “fall from grace” through trauma, and the dissolution of the life I loved, eventually I had to come back to the wound of separation itself. To our collective, and my personal and ancestral, division from the Feminine.

But I noticed that if I could just separate from the world and get very quiet during menstruation, and let myself free bleed on a red towel or on the Earth, I could feel the connection again.

One day in the forest I felt my blood flow like an umbilical cord back into the womb of Gaia’s love, and it was one of the most sensual ecstatic experiences of my life.

I’d like to believe and imagine that perhaps that’s what the Priestesses of Gaia in the mountains of Delphi, and all across our Earth, did for thousands and thousands of years, seeding the land for my own one-day remembering.

Over the years that followed, my blood brought me back to Earth again, womb presence healed my nervous system, creation came from my own sacred eroticism, and my visions returned as I remembered my own liberated, sovereign, embodied Priestess Path in the world again.

Your Story as an Oracle

The Pythias may have been seen as “special,” but I believe at the core, they were everyday women. They each carried a unique thread of Gaia, just as every one of us does today. We are exquisitely profoundly unique, and yet we are all equally treasure.

And I wonder, free from the dogma of the temples and the oppression of patriarchal systems… what magic might the Pythias have co-created together in a truly wild sovereign sisterhood of shared celebration and liberation?

On my first pilgrimage to Delphi in 2021, I had a vision while sitting in the Temple of Apollo…

We were a circle of women. A circle of women beyond hierarchy. We were each the queens of our own life path. Together, we formed harmony and the hive of interdependence. Trusting our gifts, trusting ourselves, trusting our medicine, we brought magic to life again.

We live in an unprecedentedly beautiful and heartbreaking time of both incredible privilege as modern women and devastating world collapse and collective suffering.

If there has ever been a time when highly sensitive, tuned in, empathic, emotional, unconventional, creative, free thinking, powerful, soulful women are being called to trust the power in our female bodies, and to listen for the prophecies Gaia sings within our own wombs…

I’d say the time is now.

What do you feel is your place within it?
As the Oracle of your precious life?
As the daughter of Gaia’s vision?
As the knowing that calls to you from your womb?

Let me know in the comments, I’d be honored to receive your voice…

Our Invitation as Oracles of the Womb

I like to be optimistic, but we live in a time when it’s highly unlikely that our corrupt narcissistic mentally ill and profoundly disconnected world leaders are going to ask menstruating and menopausal women for guidance on how to shape humanity’s evolution. (Even if it’s exactly what will save our planet.)

But I would also say, we live in a time when a critical mass of the population are absolutely ready and craving to reawaken to a greater world possibility where each and every one of us is an intricate prophetic oracular creator within the whole.

Where we dream a new world together.

Where we weave the essential threads of spirit and matter in harmony.

Where the feminine and masculine co-create magic in union.

And it absolutely begins with each of us trusting a deeper embodied knowing within ourselves.

These days, as women choosing to trust a deeper voice inside of ourselves, as our own unique calling on behalf of Gaia’s greatest vision for us all, we’re probably not here to serve humanity in underground rooms in marble temples on dragon gilded thrones for thousands of pilgrims traveling far and wide (and thank the Goddess for that!!!)

Instead, we show up in our communities.

We bring love, awareness, consciousness, and healing through our mothering and relationships.

We support others as therapists, healers, mentors, teachers, writers, and artists.

And we create ripples of change at the deepest level through our embodiment.

To be that in the world, we do need to continually create space to come home to the temple within ourselves, to hear Gaia’s voice inside of our own bodies, and remember the real again.

Pythia, The Oracle of Delphi: When Women Channeled the Voice of the Womb