The more things change

Often we hear the phrase, the more things change the more they stay the same.  To challenge that notion, I offer the following account from Pausanius on the practice to learn the future at the oracle at Trophonius.  Not quite your typical Saturday at the strip mall.

“After this he is taken by the priests, not at once to the oracle, but to fountains of water very near each other.  Here he must drink water called the water of Forgetfulness, that he may forget all that he has been thinking of hitherto, and afterwards he drinks another water, the water of Memory, which causes him to remember what he sees after his descent.  After looking at the image which they say was made by Daedalus (it is not shown by the priests save to such as are going to visit Trophonius), having seen it, worshipped it and prayed, he proceeds to the oracle, dressed in a linen tunic, with ribbons girding it, and wearing boots of the country.  The oracle is on the mountain, beyond the grove.  Round it is a circular basement of white marble, the circumfrance of which is about that of a small threshing-floor, while its height is just short of two cubits.  On the basement stand spikes, which, like the cross-bars holding them together , are bronze, while through them has been made a double door.  Within the enclosure is a chasm in the earth, not natural, but artificially constructed after the most accurate masonry.  The shape of this structure is like that of a bread-oven.  Its breath across the middle one might conjecture to be about four cubits, and its depth could be estimated to extend to more than eight cubits.  They have made no descent to the bottom, but when a man comes to Trophonius, they bring him a narrow light ladder.  After going down he finds a hole between the floor and the structure.  Its breath appeared to be two spans, and its height one span.  The descender lies with his back on the ground, holding barley cakes kneaded with honey, thrusts his feet into the hole and himself follows, trying hard to get his knees into the hole.  After his knees the rest of his body is at once swiftly drawn in, just as the largest and most rapid river will catch a man in its eddy and carry him under.  After this those who have entered the shrine learn the future, not in one and the same way in all cases, but by sight sometimes and other times hearing.  The return upwards is by the same mouth, the feet darting out first…After his ascent from Trophonius the inquirer is again taken in hand by the priests, who set him upon a chair called Memory, which stands not far from the shrine, and they ask him, when seated there, all he has seen and learned.  After gaining the information they then entrust him to his relatives.  These lift him, paralysed with terror and unconscious of both himself and his surroundings, and carry him to the building where he lodged before with Good Fortune and the Good Spirit.  Afterwards, however, he will recover his faculties, and the power to laugh will return to him.” (Pausanias, Description of Greece, Boeotia, XXXIX)

To what lengths would you go to learn the future?