fibi ducks
Active Member
I was reading the Odyssey and found Athena talking to Telemachus. She's in disguise as a mortal, and says something like "I will prophesy to you even though I am not a prophet. I will tell you what the gods tell me".Then she tells him that his father is alive and will return and various other things.
Well if that was a plausible thing to say to someone, then it seems any mortal can hear things direct from a god. Now, if we can assume that the gods weren't really turning up and talking to people direct then it seems it would be a voice in the mind, or something like that. I thought about it and remembered an occasion when it became clear to me that someone had lied to me about a year before - I asked and it turned out to be true. If I'd been living in the ancient world perhaps I would have thought that a god had told me? I wondered if anyone else on this forum had experiences of knowledge appearing in their mind in this way? (In an instant, with no apparent reason). Also, if anyone had such a realisation and it turned out to be wrong?
Back to mythology, I suppose someone might have suddenly known that - say - Odysseus wasn't the real father of Telemachus, or something else...and passed this on as having come to them from a god. Far-fetched, maybe, but I'm quite taken with this idea. And I wonder where these apparent insights come from.
Well if that was a plausible thing to say to someone, then it seems any mortal can hear things direct from a god. Now, if we can assume that the gods weren't really turning up and talking to people direct then it seems it would be a voice in the mind, or something like that. I thought about it and remembered an occasion when it became clear to me that someone had lied to me about a year before - I asked and it turned out to be true. If I'd been living in the ancient world perhaps I would have thought that a god had told me? I wondered if anyone else on this forum had experiences of knowledge appearing in their mind in this way? (In an instant, with no apparent reason). Also, if anyone had such a realisation and it turned out to be wrong?
Back to mythology, I suppose someone might have suddenly known that - say - Odysseus wasn't the real father of Telemachus, or something else...and passed this on as having come to them from a god. Far-fetched, maybe, but I'm quite taken with this idea. And I wonder where these apparent insights come from.