ORACLES

Will rustling leaves
a tinkling bronze cauldron
marked arrows and sticks
meandering spiders
coca leaves, yarrow stalks
the Urim and Thummim,
black and white stones,
be the delivered divinely
response or will it be
addressed by one
so inspired verbally.

Which deity to address
which Oracle to seek
very weighty matters
for citizen and kings indeed.
Will it be the sanctuary
of Zeus at Dodona and
the priestesses there or
at Claros shrine to Apollo
famous in Roman times;
perhaps it will be one of
Sibylla and her prophesies
as written in the Sibylline
Oracles or the most famous
of all the Delphic Oracle,
principal shrine of Apollo
where an elderly medium
known as the Pythia gives
frenzied answers in response.

Sacred objects and dreams,
the substance of Hebrew
high priests, the oracles of
Isaiah admonishing the people
of Jerusalem is well known.
Temple prophetesses in Babylonia
also interpreted dreams while
the oracle for Amon
the Egyptian deity in the
oasis of Siwa some four
hundred feet below sea level,
was well renowned.
At the other side of the seas
oracles were most important too
such as that of a huaca near Cuzco
decorated with gold, or the
oracle of Pachacamac near Lima
for naught of import was undertaken
without the blessings of the gods.

Now let us journey to our century
some five thousand years apart
no longer have we the same gods
most oracles are long gone
pillaged and destroyed;
we think how sophisticated we are
with all our knowledge
all our technology
how quaint of us to so carry on
would you really like to know
not all that much has changed.

Our current seers the software crowd
using related names for good purposes
since these oracles will ordain
our future for us now
so that terms such as
the Delphi Run-time Library or
Delphi Integrated Design Environment
are to most of us just as mystifying perhaps as
the oracles of old needing priestly interpretors;
not for naught then is it most appropriate
to have "Oracle" as the world's second
largest software publisher, the first
of course is also most renowned.

Herbert Holzbauer
© September 2000