Apollo, the patriarchal Sun God of classic Greece, was a mythological ·
latecomer to the oracular shrine at Delphi, though now he is always
associated with it. Apollo began as an underground oracular hero, in fact,
and his name means "apple-man." In classic myth, he could not rule ar
Delphi until he had slain the sacred python with his arrows (or phallic
sunbeams), as Zeus had also killed the dragon-offspring of the Earth
Goddess, at Dodona. But even after the slaying of the symbolic python,
the prophetic Sibyl at "Apollo's Delphi" remained a woman. Bending over
her tripod, inhaling smoke and entering trance, she pronounced her judg-
ments on past, present, and future acts of the Greeks. (But Apollo, as
harbinger of patriarchal/Sun God technology, increased the production-
demand on the oracle beyond her endurance and human capacity, driving
her mad. As John Michell has noted, the same policy of artificially induc-
ing and mechanically increasing the earth's fertility-attempting to mass-
produce earth's fruits for profit rather than accepting what is given organ-
ically by Nature- can be found wherever the Solar gods assumed manage-
ment over the ancient shrines of the Goddess. 4