The human demand for divine guidance long maintained the influence of oracles everywhere, and it is not improbable that in general they furthered what was good religiously and socially. They were bonds of union between communities, and their authoritative rôle would naturally force on them a certain sense of responsibility. As to the character of the mouthpieces of the gods and the material on which they based their answers to questions we have not the means of forming a definite opinion. There can be little doubt that the official persons were sometimes sincere in the belief that they were inspired—such is the testimony of observers for both savage and civilized communities—and many modern instances bear out this view. On the other hand, there is reason to suppose that pretense and fraud often crept into the administration of the oracles. When the questions were known beforehand the responses may have been based on information that came from various quarters and on insight into the particular situation about which the inquiry was made. When the questions were not known beforehand we are in the dark as to the source of the answers. Sometimes, doubtless, they were happy or unhappy guesses; sometimes they were enigmatical or ambiguous in form, so that they could be made to agree with the events that actually occurred. In most cases the authorities would know how to explain the issue in such a way as to maintain the credit of the oracle. The best-known and the most impressive of the utterers of oracles is the priestess of Apollo at Delphi, the Pythia. She occupied a commanding position in the Hellenic world (and beyond it), such as was enjoyed by few persons of the time.[1689] She was invested with special sanctity as the dispenser of divine guidance to the Western world (to nations and individuals). It was required of her that she be morally and ceremonially pure, and she had to undergo a special preparation for the delivery of her message. The manner of her revelation did not differ from that of similar officials in noncivilized communities—she spoke in a condition of ecstasy; she is the best representative of the intimate union of the diviner and a great god, a union that tended to give dignity and wisdom as well as authority to the oracular utterance.[1690] She was, thus, in the best position for exerting a good influence on the world of her time. How far the oracles of Apollo and other deities furthered the best interests of religion it may be difficult to say—the data for an exact answer are lacking. Socially they were useful in maintaining a certain unity among peoples, and they may sometimes have upheld justice and given judicious advice, but they were always exposed to the temptation of fraud.
Necromancy. While in ancient times the dead were everywhere placated by gifts and were sometimes worshiped, the consultation of them for guidance seems to have been relatively infrequent. The attitude of existing lower tribes toward ghosts varies in different places,[1691] but the predominant feeling seems to be fear; these tribes have not accomplished that social union between themselves and the departed without which, as it appears, the living do not feel free to apply to the latter for information concerning things past, present, and future.[1692] Savage and half-civilized peoples depend for such information on divination by means of common phenomena (omens) and on the offices of magicians and soothsayers, and references in published reports to necromantic usages among them are rare and vague. But among civilized peoples also application to the dead is not as frequent as might be expected; there is still fear of ghosts, and the part assigned in early times to spirits in the administration of human life has been given over to gods—family divinities and the great oracular deities supply the information that men need. There are few signs of dependence on necromancy in China, India, Persia, and Rome. The Babylonian mythical hero Gilgamesh procures (through the aid of an Underworld god) an interview with his dead friend Eabani in order to learn the nature of the life below;[1693] this story points, perhaps, to necromantic usages, but in the extant literature there are no details of such usages. Application to the dead is certified for the old Hebrews not only by the story of Saul's consultation of Samuel (which, though a folk-story, may be taken to prove a popular custom) but by a prophetic passage condemning the practice.[1694] Teraphim were employed, probably, for divination, but there is no proof that they were connected with necromancy.[1695] After the sixth century B.C. we hear nothing of consultation of the dead by the pre-Christian Jews. Among the Greeks also such consultation seems not to have enjoyed a high degree of favor. There were oracles of the dead (of heroes and others), but these were inferior in importance to the oracles of the great gods[1696] and gradually ceased to be resorted to. Where the practice of incubation existed, answers to inquiries were sometimes, doubtless, held to come from the dead, but more commonly it was a god that supplied the desired information.
The stages in the history of necromantic practice follow the lines of growth of psychical and theistic beliefs. There was first the era of spirits when men were doubtful of the friendliness of ghosts, and held it safer in general to trust to soothsayers for guidance in life. Then, when the gods took distinct shape, they largely displaced ghosts as dispensers of knowledge of the future, and these latter, standing outside of and in rivalry with the circle of State deities, could be approached only in secret—necromancy became illicit and its influence was crippled. And when, finally, in the earlier centuries of our era, the old gods disappeared, the rise of monotheistic belief was accompanied by a transformation of the conception of the future of the soul; it was to be no longer the inert earthly thing of the old theories but instinct with a high life that fitted it to be the companion of divine beings and the sharer of their knowledge and their ideals.[1697] This conception led to the belief in the possibility of a nonmagical friendly intercourse with the departed, who, it was assumed, would be willing to impart their knowledge to their brethren on earth. Saints have thus been appealed to, and it has been attempted in recent times to enter into communication with departed kin and other friends.
[928]. The office of diviner, though it has always been an influential one, has followed in its development the general course of social organization, becoming more and more specialized and defined. In the simplest religions the positions of magician and diviner are frequently united in one person. In Greenland the Angekok, acting as the interpreter or mouthpiece of a supernatural being from whom men learn how they may be fortunate, foretells the condition of the weather and the fortunes of fishing.[1698] A similar combination of the offices is found among the Ainu, and apparently among the Cakchiquels, among whom the divining function is said to have related particularly to war.[1699]
[929]. There was, however, as is remarked above, a tendency to invest the priest with the function of divination. The Arabian kahin was a soothsayer, the Hebrew kohen was a priest.[1700] The Yorubans have a special god of divination whose priest is the soothsayer of the community. In Ashantiland priests and priestesses, who are exceedingly influential and powerful, owe a great deal of their importance to their ability to explain signs and omens, especially to discover guilt and to foretell events.[1701] In the elaborate divinatory ceremonies of the Ahoms of Southeastern Asia, the conductors, who are highly considered in the community, are priests; these people are partly Hinduized, but probably retain much of their ancient religious forms.[1702] A noteworthy specialization of functions is found among the Todas of Southern India, who distinguish the diviner from the magician, the prophet, and the dairyman. The diviner is inspired by a god, gives his utterances in an ecstatic state, and for the most part limits himself to the explanation of the origin of misfortunes.[1703] It would be a matter of interest to trace, if it were possible, a history of this specialization, but the early fortunes of the Toda religion are without records and can only be surmised. In ancient Gaul the diviner, it is said, was distinguished from the priest and the prophet.[1704] Where divination is the duty of the priestly body, there is sometimes a differentiation within this body, some persons devoting themselves specifically to soothsaying; so among the Babylonians, where this function was most important.[1705]
[930]. Among the old Hebrews the soothsaying function is connected not only with priests but also with prophets.[1706] The priest was the official diviner, employing the urim and thummim. Prophets and dreamers are mentioned together as persons of the same class and as sometimes employing their arts for purposes contrary to the national religion; various classes of diviners are mentioned as existing among the Israelites in the seventh century B.C., but the distinctions between them are not given.[1707] From a statement in Isaiah ii, 6, it may perhaps be inferred that some form of divination was imported into Israel in the eighth century or earlier from the more developed Philistines and from the countries east of the Jordan;[1708] and the passage just referred to in Deuteronomy probably reveals Assyrian influence. While the Egyptian documents have much to say of magic, they give little information with regard to the existence of a class of diviners; but it appears, according to a Hebrew writer,[1709] that the art of divination might belong to any prominent person—Joseph is represented as divining from a cup.
[931]. The greatest development of the office of the diviner in ancient times was found among the Greeks and Romans.[1710] The Greek word mantis appears to have been a general term for any person, male or female, who had the power of perceiving the will of the gods. The early distinction between the mantis and the prophetes is not clear. Plato, indeed, distinguishes sharply between the two terms:[1711] the mantis, he says, while in an ecstatic state cannot understand his own utterances, and it is, therefore, the custom to appoint a prophetes who shall interpret for him; some persons, he adds, give the name mantis to this interpreter, but he is only a prophetes. We find, however, that the terms are frequently used interchangeably; thus the Pythia is called both mantis and prophetis. Whatever may have been the original sense of these terms, the office of diviner in Greece was in the main separate from that of priest. It is found attached to families and was hereditary. It was recognized by the State from an early time and became more and more influential. According to Xenophon Socrates believed in and approved divination.[1712] Plato held that it was a gift of the gods, and that official persons so gifted were to be held in high esteem.
[932]. In Rome, in accordance with the genius of the nation, soothsaying was at a comparatively early period organized and taken in charge by the State. There were colleges of augurs,[1713] standing in various relations to political and social life, having their heads (chief augurs)—thus in their organization similar to the priesthood, but standing quite apart from this. The same sort of organization was established in the Etruscan office of haruspex[1714] when this was introduced into Rome. The members of these colleges were at first Etruscans and, as such, looked down on; but gradually Roman youth of good family and education were trained for the duty, and in the time of the Emperor Claudius the social difference between augurs and haruspices seems to have been almost eliminated.[1715]
[933]. Sibyls. In the old Græco-Roman world inspired women played a great rôle.[1716] The belief in such personages goes back to the old conception of the possession of human beings by a supernatural being, which, as we have seen, was common in early forms of religion. This idea assumed various shapes in Greece, and in the course of time the inspired women were connected with various deities. In the Dionysus cult the orgiastic rites (in which women took a chief part) seem to have grown up from old agricultural ceremonies in which the spirit or god of vegetation was invoked to give his aid. Such ceremonies naturally coalesced here as elsewhere with the license of popular festivities. The legends connected with the Dionysus cult introduced savage features into the rites, as, for example, in the story of Pentheus.[1717] But whatever may have been the case in Thrace, whence the cult came to Greece, it was not so in historical times in Greece, where the celebrations were controlled by the State. These exhibit then only the natural frenzy of excited crowds without the element of divination.
[934]. The development of the rôle of women as representatives of deities is illustrated by the character of the priestesses of oracular shrines.[1718] These, like the Dionysiac devotees, are seized and possessed by the god, and speak in a state of frenzy. But their frenzy is controlled by civilized conditions. It exists only as a preparation for divination; it is the movement of the god in them laboring to express himself, and his expression is couched in intelligible human language. The priestess is a part of an organized and humanized cult and, as such, represents to a certain extent the ideas of a civilized society. The Dionysiac woman yields to an excess of animal excitement, without thought for society; the priestess feels herself responsible to society. A similar progress in civilized feeling appears among the old Hebrews; the incoherency of the earlier prophets[1719] gives way to the thoughtful discourses of the ethical leaders.[1720] The manner and the expression of revelation always conform to existing social usages.