At Delphi in Greece the inspired oracle of Apollo, the Pythia, underwent a form of possession in which she was viewed as a vehicle for the god. Nevertheless, uncertainty has surrounded the exact nature of the experience of possession of the Pythia, and what could cause or motivate such experiences. This chapter explores the use of a range of explicit analogies and explanatory models to interpret the experience of the Pythia at the sanctuary of Apollo, and the broader context within which it occurred. Understanding of the Pythia can draw on explanatory models that reach beyond the categories of divination and possession. This includes not only the wider class of revelatory experiences in which supernatural agents (such as God or gods, demons, or spirits) speak or act through humans, but other types of experience involving alterations of the sense of identity and agency, whether they occur in psychopathology or as normal variations in experience. Examples include hallucinations and alien control phenomena in schizophrenia, and their analogues in religious experience; dissociation; and experiments combining suggestion and neuroimaging to model revelatory and possession states. All provide potential insights into the forms of experience, attributed significance, and causal processes involved in Apollo’s communication through the Pythia. They also point to the central role of ideas, expectations, and beliefs in influencing dissociations of the sense of self, and make the Pythia’s possession by Apollo seem less exotic, improbable, or deviant than it might once have seemed.
The Pythia at Delphi
