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  • Chapter 10 - Consulting the Oracle at Dodona: An Ontological Perspective

  • from Part II - Consultation and Cognition
  • Edited by Hugh Bowden, King's College London, Esther Eidinow, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Visiting the Oracle at Dodona
    Published online:
    26 February 2026
    Print publication:
    12 March 2026, pp 214-239
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  • Summary

    This essay pursues an ontological understanding of consultations at Dodona. The premise of this investigation is that if we are to understand a divinatory consultation as the Greeks themselves did, then we need to put aside our own Western Post-Enlightenment (largely secular) ontological assumptions concerning the existence of supernatural beings and view the world through the ontological assumptions of the Greeks themselves. This is a much more radical suggestion than the traditional injunction of putting on the cultural filters of the ancient Greeks, in as much as that step is then invariably followed by an act of cultural translation (which all too often is a ‘mistranslation’). The practice of divination, therefore, should be analysed in emic terms and then described in those terms as well, rather than being re-described in our own terms. Nevertheless, the emic understanding of a consultation can be enhanced by the application of Actor-Network Theory and an Object-Oriented Ontology, since they reveal the implicit social dynamics involved in consulting and interpreting oracles.