SVETLANA MERITT
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The Oracle of Cumaean Sybil

8/1/2014

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After a year of inactivity, my Photolog of Sacred Sites is back! I’m resuming the presentation of mysterious, intriguing, or famous places of power that have affected people since remote times.
In this post I will give an example of a sacred place that has “shut down” due to either desecration of the physical site, debasement of its original purpose, or neglect through loss of human intention—or all three. It’s the famous oracle of Cumaean Sybil in southwest Italy.

Cumae was the oldest Greek colony on the Apennine Peninsula, founded in the 9th century BC. It was the Greek Cumeans who introduced the alphabet into Italy and established the oracle where Sibyl divined. Now, Sibyl was actually not a personal name, but a Latinized Greek word for “prophetess”--sibylla. Dedicated to the sun god Apollo, Sibyls were virgin priestesses endowed with powers of divination and believed to be semi-divine beings. As such they were immortal, or nearly so. There were several Sibyls in antiquity, but the Cumean Sibyl was the most famous. She was so venerated that Virgil, in his grand epic the Aeneid, had his hero Aeneas seek guidance from the Cumean Sibyl before undertaking his journey into the Underworld. Her fame stretched well into Renaissance times, when Michelangelo included her in the composition on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (although her looks are far from flattering—he painted her to look like a weight-lifter crone). According to the Latin poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses, the Cumean Sibyl lived for about one thousand years.


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    Overview

    All
    Alignments Of Carnac
    Bent Pyramid
    Castel Sant’ Angelo
    Chalice Well
    Chartres Cathedral
    Fontevraud Abbey
    Glanum
    Glastonbury Abbey
    Glastonbury Tor
    Gothic Image
    Grand Menhir
    Hatshepsut Temple
    Hilandar Monastery
    Horus The Avenger
    Inside The King’s Chamber
    Isle Of Avalon
    Notre Dame De Livron
    Old Lyon
    Paestum
    Petra Tou Romiou
    Pyramids Of Giza
    Ramanasramam
    Step Pyramid Of Zoser
    The Bourges Cathedral
    The Hooded Man
    The Lion Gate
    The Oracle Of Cumaean Sybil
    The Oracle Of Delphi
    The Osireion
    The Paimpont Forest

  • Home
  • About
    • Contact
  • Meet Me in the Underworld
    • Press
  • Sacred Places Blog
  • Events
  • Gallery
    • Sacred Sites
    • Edge of Water
    • Form and Color
    • Mediterranean Moods
    • Windows of Rome
    • Nature Spirits
    • Exhibitions
    • Self Portrait
    • Flower Fantasia