A year before we went to Greece I began dreaming about it. The themes were very similar. I would go with a group of mostly unknown people to an island. We would look for treasure, play games like children and then have to decide whether to catch the boat back or spend the night.

I love the way the imagination connects the literal material world with the ideal, spiritual realms and mediates their relationship. Children have a natural, though undeveloped sense of this, I think, in their organically playing out of the paths of meaning and value. I especially like the way this imaginal connection is expressed in dreams and our relationship with them. Other modalities imaginative connectedness exist; psychotherapy, dancing, painting, socializing, reading, writing, or just plain thinking and reflecting. All tend to organically unfold the "What are we really doing and why are we doing it?". These questions were at one time asked of the oracles, and the most famous of all was the oracle at Delphi. To even get into the temple to ask a question required sleeping on the steps of the temple until one had a dream that indicated you would not be wasting the oracles time. The priestess, the pythia, would sit on her tripod seat in a trance and speak as the medium of the oracle.

The Delphic oracle was known and used even before the Greeks arrived. After they came with their male god Apollo (who is said to have slain the Dragon/monster at Delphi and taken the oracle for his own use), a group of male priests surrounded the priestess and would "interpert" the things she said. By 700-500 BCE the interpretations were used to increase the political power of Delphi and by about 500 the oracle was falling into disrepute. The claim was that the oracle was ambiguous and not fitting with the rational spirit of Greece. There didn't seem to be any questioning of the patriarchal overseer's abuse and rational manipulation of the original pre-greek spirit of the oracle, but the concern at the time was how to beat the Persians, not how to live a meaningful life. We know what happened to Socarates, who stressed meaningful questioning at this same politically-oriented time. However, the oracle continued to have some influence for several hundred more years. Even some Roman emperors sent delegates to consult the oracle.

My interest lay in another direction. In the Oracle is an example of a connection, a bridge, between the world of Man and that of Spirit, between a personal life and a transpersonal carrier of the values needed to make that life meaningful - and via a medium that is closely connected and associated with dreams. I won't go into the connections between shamanistic trance and dreams here, but I do want to mention that they are closely related and that our understanding of one adds to our understanding of the other.

Little is known about how the priestess achieved her trance connection. Some say drugs, some say a vapor came up through the ground, others say it corresponds to other techniques known by other matriarchal societies and passed down the female line mother to daughter just like the Indian and African witchdoctors, the Siberian Shamans or the South American Shamans passed techniques via the male line, father to son. Yet there is no proof of any of this, and though many people have strong opinons, how the priestess connected with the oracle is still being hotly debated.

What has become clear is that the site of Delphi is a newer, secondary site and the original site was a cave or caves high in the Parnassos mountains above the site at Delphi. Scholars and archeologists feel they have located this cave, the Corycian Carvern (Korikio Andron). I found a map in a book on the Delphic myth and brought it with me to Greece. After leaving Athens, Pat and I stayed in the "modern" hillside town of Delphi and had a chance to look for the cave. Maria's husband, the innkeeper at Hotel Athena in Delphi, drew another more detailed map for me to the place where the roads stop and a trail up the side of Parnassos begins. It was a nice morning and we went to a local bakery to load our backpacks with bread and powdered sugar cookies. I could locate the bakery blocks away from the smell of fresh breads.

I was struggling with the meaning of a dream I had that morning. In the dream I was being given a test. Seven rocks were placed before me and I knew I had not been trained well enough to take this test. But one of the assistants let slip enough of a clue to get me writing. The teacher threatened the assistant, but allowed me to go on with the clue, which was to use an imaginary system to describe a situation that had to be made clear to others.

I took the dream primarily as a cautionary note. I could continue to explore via the path of imagination, but needed to feel myself a participant in the process. Getting "help" was kind of like cheating, though not quite that severe. I decided to keep and eye out for the seven rocks and allow this to unfold as the day went on.

From the balcony we could hear singing. Down the street an old Greek man sat at a table in his little hillside yard smiling and waving to people as he sang and listened to an old radio. We drove out of the hillside town of Delphi and into cliffside town of Arahova where, after a few wrong turns and help from the locals, we were off in the right direction.

It was really nice to get away from the crowds. The day before we went to the Ancient Site of Delphi were bus loads of tourists were herded around in large groups. It was the European Spring Break, when the kids all go on classical tours. A touring group of school children from Italy arrived just before we went into the museum. We decided to wait for them to finish and leave. They could tolerate the museum for only a few moments so we were sure they would all be out soon. Dreadful little monsters compared to the Greek school children we encountered. The Greek children seem to still be so unspoiled, shy, fresh. The Italian school children were so sophisticated and socialized, busy strutting and teasing each other to go a little further, pushing the limits of the event. They were already teenagers!

To get away we climbed up to the stadium on the hill. I took a nap and had a dream. I am watching a woman in the dream. She appears to be an ancient Greek warrior. She has on her helmet three horses and in front of her swiming in the air are two dolphins.

Later when we returned to Athens I found an image of the "Varvakeion" Athena which has three pegasus on her helmet. At the time I simple felt starngley compelled to run around the stadium. Later, as other people came up to the stadium, we noticed that they too would often spontaneously break into a run or preform some kind of gymnastic feat.

Pat and I were glad the next day to be away from all of this and on the dirt roads. We didn't see anyone all day. At least no one human. While going up the trail I began to have doubts again that we were on the right path. But we decided it was a nice trail anyway, and so we kept going. Eventually I heard a tinkling bell and followed the sound. I came out on a cliff side with a view of the Arachovite Meadows, a cradled mountain field. Rising up from the valley, more mountains. This was the ancient valley were the people who lived here before the Greeks. The bell sound was behind me and I turned around and saw a goat on the hill, watching us. Below the goat was a cave opening. Since one of the gods associated with the grotto was Pan, the Goat god, I took this to be a welcoming sign.

I didn't have a flashlight, but there was the daylight coming in. I tried "Hello" and "Kali-Mera" and a few other announcements in various languages, but got no reply. The cave floor slanted down and in rather quickly, and I could see my breath as I decended. Then I saw them. The cave opened inward and formed a large globe like room. At the back were the mythic rock formations I had heard about. Wonderful multiple stalagmite formations. Like hunched over monsters, they sat as guardians to the lower grotto and watched us in silent petrification. As my eyes began to adjust to the reduced light, I could see that behind them in the darkness were whole walls of formations, like Baroque organ pipes that had been grown organicly and then had dark wax dripped on them for centuries, for milleniums, for epochs. At first I felt like an intruder, as if a wonderful party had been going on in the cave and everyone froze to stone as I entered. A ancient respect kept me quiet and mouse like. After all, this was a sacred grotto and these stone beings once spoke secret eternal truths to and with their worshipers. And this was considered to be one of the entrances to the Underworld, to the darkness beyond which few can see and fewer return. Certainly that depth is carried by the grotto.

But I felt an even stonger spirit beginning to move. A more playful and curious atmosphere now slowly began to animate these lithic-beings. I felt more relaxed and welcomed. I remember being at the zoo one day and walking over to rest on a bench.

The squirrels in the area froze or ran off. But as soon as they sensed I was not a threat to them they began to play and jump around again. So too in the cave, either I or the rocks or both grew more playful. Pat must have sensed this too and came down into the grotto. We had a delightful time, singing and exploring the parts of the grotto we could without light. I had intended to just sit and listen to the silence and small voices of the cave. But it was a little chilly and this seemed to call for more active play. I made a ring of seven stones as my dream came back to me. I began singing. I made-up Gregorian chants about life, universe and everything. I made up my life story like the Odessey of Homer and told this to the cave. It was during this improvisational singing that I touched a source in the cave, or it had touched a source in me.

The cave became my friend. It was clear that if this had not been the original cave of the oracle, it had been used by many. I imagined baccants and maenads running through these hills and night with torches and falling asleep in a large group her in the cave. I've always regretted we didn't spend the night in the cave, but perhaps this fits better with my fate. My destiny didn't lay any longer in going further into the cave and darkness, but in befriending, seeing and unfolding the oracle in a new way I didn't quite yet understand.

Upon returning to our hotel that evening in Delphi, a rainstorm came through the valley. The thunder seemed like laughter we had shared with the cave and the rain its weeping the sadness of our leaving. Soon the clouds passed, the sun came out and the old man below the hotel came back out to sing to his radio and anyone with the time to hear his song.

Then had a dream. In the dream a man is lying down and telling a few of us around him his dream. When he finishes, we make comments on the meaning of the dream. While I am doing this a goat like fellow moves next to the dreamer and whispers to him, "I want to dance this dream with you." We are all amazed at the profoundness of the connection this makes between the dream and the dreamer.

Upon awakening I realized I wanted to add more drama to my dreamwork. The oracle had become too Apollonian and so had my oracle, the dream. "The Far Seer" Apollo is sometimes called. The original oracle had connections to Apollo's brother, Dionysos, a diety seen more in later Greek culture in the dance and drama. Pan, the maenaids, esctatic dance were all part of Dionysos' pantheon. It was Pan that taught Apollo dreamwork when he came to Delphi, or so one myth says. One of the stone formations in the Corycian Cave is still called "Pan". This may at time be pandemonium, but at others it is a sure footed traveller that walks the hills above the valley were men and woman live. Along this border the oracle can still be heard.

Out of the cave and onto the stage of the world. It was still a few years before I realized how this metaphor plays out on the stage of the Net. Ah, but that's another song.

Part of the Electric Dreams Significant Dreams Series

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