They were old things. Neolithic. Repurposed. Because no one knew what they had originally been for.

This was the oldest of the cabinets. Small, with a dark and carven door. Squat and unprepossessing. Easily ignored.

He pointed it out to me, “Have you seen that yet?” I shook my head. He opened the door and one by one took out the objects, placing them on the examining table, carefully, his gloves barely touching their surface. We were in the air-controlled room, wearing full white suits so no sweat or human anything would degrade the objects. 

“These are far older than the bog people,” he murmured as he turned one bulbous form to face me. Shocked, I instinctively stepped back. It was a face carved in stone, so realistic it could have been formed yesterday. White stone, large face and great eyes that looked blankly out at our modern laboratory. The lips were pursed as if whistling. “That is where the steam came out.” I understood – this had been a capstone on an oracular fissure, like in Delphi, only earlier, and it was pure white marble (I assumed).

“See,” he explained, “It was lain on the ground over the fissure, then turned to permit the gas to pour from the mouth. This gas entered the small cave to fill the atmosphere. When a questioner went to the living oracle to receive a divine message of guidance, they sat at her feet, gave her the question, and she decided if she would answer. If no, the petitioner was waved away after being given a nosegay of mountain herbs and a word – “pray for your answer to appear in the mirror of your heart.”

If the oracle was to answer the question, in the poetic riddlry and mysterious dark old language known only to the initiates, her helpers would blindfold the petitioner.

Then she descended from her seat, and knelt down on the steps of marble. Beside the steps was the oracle stone face, and she turned it slightly to release the gas that then came out of the mouth. 

Then she said her invocation, bent further down to the face and kissed the pursed and hissing lips, inhaling the gas as she did so. The serpent kiss. 

Three times the oracle bent, kissed and inhaled before her helpers assisted her back to her seat. They removed the petitioner’s blindfold and the oracle began to speak. The question was far away and not answered in a direct manner. 

Looking into the questioner’s eyes, the oracle began to sing in a particular rhythm, whatever came to the tongue. Then she stopped and became dead serious. Closing her eyes, rocking forward and back, her voice deep and gutteral, doubled with high overtones in play and without opening her mouth, a voice spoke for her, as she uttered words of gibberish, energetic fields of vibratory opening, over and over again until finally that sequence was done and she could release her tight grasping hands that had held her arms too tightly. A pause. She was barely visible now in the darkness of the cave. But her voice was familiar, natural.

In this way she began to speak. First telling the common tale of the people of this place and of the plants and animals providing food and shelter for them, and of their coming to that place and of what they brought and what they left behind. Then the list of ancestors one after the other in unbroken lineage. It was a very long list. Each name spoken aloud, each person named then appears briefly in vibrational form. The cave was populated again with the living. But only for an instant. That was done. 

She then spoke to the questioner: do you want the truth? 

Yes I want the truth.

Can you act on the truth?

Yes I will act upon it as bidden.

Are you a servant of God?

Yes I am a servant of God.

This is the answer, and with that the formal initiatory invocation was complete. The petitioner was led to a high bed of rushes, and laid down as if on that bier as if dead. Two tallow torch lamps stood on poles at the head and two at the footing. They were lit to fill the space with warm flickering light.

She slipped into sleep, into night, while outside it was now bright noon. Inside it was midnight. Everyone was exhausted, especially the oracle. Helpers brought her a special drink and she revived to speak again. This time she held herbs in her hands and passed them from side to side, up and down, walking counter-sunways around the petitioner. She crushed the herbs on the person’s head, then poured oil on the crown. The oil dripped down as the petitioner laid perfectly still with eyes closed, as instructed. Helpers drummed on hand drums and made animal calling sounds, whistles, and yelps. 

Then, no more sounds, no words, a wide as total trance now took all into its open empty field. 

Answers emerged as glyphs in the empty space above the petitioner’s bier. No one could read them but scribes copied them down on the flat stones with charcoal. They gave the written message to the oracle, the only person trained to read it. 

She nodded and broke away, then concentrating on the farthest distant point past her eyes’ vision, she radiated light in the pattern of the glyphs, one after the other, projecting them in a circle as she turned, projecting them in a circle as as she turned, until a sphere was created that had all the glyphs that had been given as a carven form upon its interior. This was seen by the helpers. 

They were all held in that sphere which began to vibrate the tone of these glyphs, pulsating in colour and form. Upon the chest of the petitioner lying on the bier, a small version of this very sphere appeared, hovering, as a ball of brilliant mulicoloured light. It became smaller and smaller until it could directly enter the heart, where it disappeared to be absorbed in the being of the petitioner. 

Helpers soon helped the questioner sit up, wiped away excess oil and herbs with soft scented cloths. The oracle sat perfectly still on her seat, under her closed lids her eyes were as blank as the eyes of the carven marble face. Her breath had slowed to its finest point, and her hands were still as stone. 

The oracle nodded with eyes closed as the petitioner passed. It was done.

“The truth will find its way,” they all repeated in song, as the petitioner was led stumbling out to the brightness of a late afternoon. 

They closed the cave until the next day was to come. 

The oracle’s headdress and robe were removed and taken back to the regalia chest. The unused herbs were ceremonially thanked and taken to be strewn in the herb-ground according to custom.