Those blessed with the gift of prophecy form a small but very special community.
They instinctively seek each other’s presence, they are drawn to those who are similarly blessed.
If they are mortal, they become oracles and seers whose wisdom is sought and revered, and people travel from far away to seek their counsel. They are the living vessels of the gods, who speak through them in cryptic messages, which are only understood in retrospect.
Francis Rosenfeld
Read the story in German
It’s not that the gods were trying to make their teachings obscure, or that they even cared if they were. People can’t form concepts about things that don’t yet exist.
Immortal prophets like Apollo, Phoebe, the Moirae, doled their wisdom onto the world below, speaking through their official oracles, like those of Delphi, or Cumae, who were famous and revered and to whom people dedicated temples and compounds, theaters and springs.
And then there were the quiet visionaries, who saw a lot but kept it to themselves, not wanting to put any more strain on the greater order of things than it was already under, and staying out of the affairs of the mortals, whose misinterpretations of godly wisdom were a constant source of disaster and false hope.
Persephone had gained enough wisdom in Hades to understand that not all the figments of the mind were meant to be taken at face value, and only a precious few were meant as prophecy.
