The Sibyls have a history that goes further back than I have even ever spoken of, and the stories told of them are sometimes full of inaccuracies, the quotes only a slight outline of what they once spoke…but if you hold them up to the light you can sometimes see the Sibyls heart in them, and I have endeavored to add some of my favorite facts from my own memory as well, rather than just historical record. Enjoy.
Sibyl: n 1. a female prophet, 2. a woman able to utter the prophecies and oracles of a god; or a woman who can foretell the future.
Interesting facts about the ancient Sibyls…
The Sibyls were part human and part magical creature
This made them incredibly self-aware and able to see the many worlds
The Sibyls lived for hundreds of years
They preferred to live in caves and near springs
They were known to sing their prophecies and were masters of sound
The original Sibyls could only speak the truth, and could only be one with their true nature
What others thought of them did not impact their way of being
They, in early times, lived only in their own communities, isolated from the rest of the world to allow them their wild freedom and deep understanding
They liked to write their prophecies on stones or leaves, often in code. They would leave the leaves at the mouth of the cave and the one asking the question would have to return before the wind blew them away, or try to understand them once they had.
They placed a great deal of importance on the question someone asked, and whether it came from the heart.
They made it very difficult or unsettling to find or approach them, so that only those that really, truly wished to would.
Sibyls were scattered all around the Mediterranean at the time BC became AD, but their history goes so much further back and has other more far-reaching origins.
Sibyls were the authors of the “Sibylline Books” which Rome relied heavily upon in all important matters and treasured above all else until they were burned in a temple fire. Their replacements were but a dim shadow of what they once had been.
Sibyls walked between the world of human and magical creature, between this world and others, between mortal and immortal, and between man and woman. Though they identified as women for the most part, they were often between genders as well.
The Sibyls, like the Pythias, were thought in the end to be the voice of Apollo, but began and ended as those who brought through the voice of Gaia…the Mother Earth.
Quotes About or From the Sibyls:
I am the oracular Sibyl, eldest daughter of a Naiad nymph. My native land is Erythrae alone and no other…in which I uttered oracles to mankind as soon as I had issued from the womb. And seated on this rock I sang to mortal men prophecies of events which were yet to come…
Inscription of the Erythraean Sibyl, Pausanias
“The Sibyl with raving mouth, uttering things mirthless, unadorned and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice through the god.” Heraclitus
“The earlier Sibyl belongs to the most ancient times. She is said…to have been the first woman who chanted oracles.” Pausanias
“Here am I, the plain-speaking Sibyl of Phoebus, hidden under this tomb of stone; A voiceless maiden once,…here fettered by a strong fate. But I lie under the sod near the Nymphs and this Hermes, as a reward for having kept the temple…” Pausanias
“They will say that the Sibyl is mad and deceitful, but when all things shall come to pass then ye shall remember me; and no one will any longer say, That I the prophetess of the great god am mad.” Erythraean Sibyl
“Frantic, she rages throughout the cave, bearing her neck possessed, and, shaking from her upright hair both the fillets…and the garlands…through the empty space of the Temple she whirls around her neck shaking to and fro, and throws prostate the tripods that stand in her way as she roams along, and boils with might flames…raging with wrath.” Lucan, Pharsala
“To such a degree will I be changed that I will be visible to no one; but I will be recognized by my voice. My voice the Fates will leave me.” Propertius
“Now when you are safely there…You will find an ecstatic, a seeress, who in her antre communicates Destiny, committing to leaves the mystic messages…Here you must not grudge time spent…Time spent in approaching the Sibyl, asking an oracle of her, praying that she will graciously open her mouth and prophesy.” Vergil, Aeneid
“Before the doors she spoke such words and suddenly her countenance and color changed; her braided hair shook free, her heart swollen in frenzy. And, her voice did not have a mortal sound since she was inspired by the breath of the deity.” Vergil, Aeneid
“But why indeed all-sorrowful do I sing divine oracles about other people’s suffering, holding to my fated madness?” D. Potter, Prophets and Emporers
“I am by my nature mid-way between mortal and goddess–My mother a nymph, my father an eater of fish–Ida-born from my mother; my native land is red. Marpessus, sacred to my mother, and river Aidoneus.” Pausanias
“The last age, sung of by the Cumaean Sibyl, is coming; the great cycle of ages is beginning again from the beginning…” Vergil, Eclogue
Learn more about the Sibyls and their power to heal with sound in Jennifer’s course, The Intuitive Sound Healing Course
Read more about the Sibyls here…
