It is in the nature of human beings to wonder whether there is an afterlife. And millions of people everywhere long to be reunited with loved ones lost to death.
Therefore, it is strange that the astonishing history of the ancient Greek oracles of the dead is not a matter of common knowledge. Over the last two decades, I have been attempting to rectify that situation by resurrecting simple time-honoured techniques for evoking the spirits of the departed. I have developed an effective procedure for envisioning deceased people, for feeling their presence, hearing their voices, conversing with them, and healing grief.
Using this procedure, I have guided hundreds of individuals through vivid apparitional encounters with departed friends and relatives, and taught the procedure to a couple of hundred physicians, psychologists, and psychotherapists. Some of them have replicated my findings and reported on their work in scholarly journals.
Of course, these claims may appear too outrageous to be believed, too bizarre even for tabloid journalism. The true story of the oracles of the dead is perhaps too sensational for sensationalism itself to embrace. So, it is best to begin by explaining the role evocation of the spirits of the dead played in the origins of Western thought.
Early Greek philosophers like Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Plato introduced the topic of life after death as a subject for rational inquiry. In fact, the mystery of an afterlife was one of the original questions upon which they founded the Western philosophical and scientific tradition. Ordinary Greeks believed that a philosopher was someone who ‘meddles in things under the earth'. This phrase was also a euphemism for the rites for raising ghosts that were practised at oracles of the dead by technicians known as psychogogues. Plainly, their contemporaries thought of philosophers as psychogogues, and the popular perception that Plato's mentor Socrates evoked the dead was factored into his trial and execution. It is unclear whether Socrates himself actually ever participated in such activities, but certain other philosophers plainly did. Empedocles, for example – the great philosopher who first propounded a theory of evolution – was associated with evocation of the deceased as it was practised on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily. Later on, Plato himself alluded to the practice of evoking the dead and acknowledged the historical tradition linking philosophy to death. He characterized philosophy as a kind of rehearsal for dying, and noted that, in seeking to know the truth, philosophers are always trying to escape the limitations of their physical bodies.
The Greek oracles of the dead thrived for at least a thousand years. During that time, these outlandish, subterranean institutions made their mark not only on philosophy but on Western literature as well. A constant stream of desperate people made their way to remote, desolate spots hoping to get a glimpse of a beloved Aunt Melissa or a trusted Uncle Aristocles. And when the pilgrims arrived at an oracle of the dead, the resident psychogogues' sophisticated technology and inherited know-how virtually guaranteed that the seekers would undergo profound, life-changing experiences. It is not surprising that touching tales of visionary reunions with the deceased should find their way into Greek literature and hence, through the millennia, into today's popular movies.
The enduring tale of the magical musician Orpheus is the best-known story to derive from an encounter at an oracle of the dead. His music tamed wild animals and even made trees bow down, but Orpheus fell into a deep despondency when his true love Eurydice died. Unable to cope, he travelled to an oracle of the dead, perhaps the famous one on the Acheron River in Thesprotia, in the far, northwestern corner of Greece, which I describe in this book. He played his lyre to summon an apparition of Eurydice but, because he muffed the instructions, he failed to lead her out of the underworld.
Even after the oracles of the dead had become long-forgotten, writers continued to pass along this enchanting tale. It persists today, told and retold in a plethora of movie versions, including A Portrait of Jenny with Joseph Cotton, Anthony Minghella's Truly Madly Deeply, James Cameron's Titanic, and Robin William's What Dreams May Come. The degree to which the story of Orpheus' other-world adventure has penetrated popular culture proves that evocation of the deceased is part of the collective cultural heritage of humankind.
It follows that, by learning how, in Shakepeare's words, to ‘call spirits from the vasty deep', we are reconnecting with our intellectual and historical roots in a very real way. In the process, we stand to recover an important lost art for alleviating grief, the source of life's worst miseries.
From Reunited, © 2006 by Raymond A Moody and Paul Perry, published by Rider.
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