Summer Solstice 2026: A Mingling of Voices

The legendary Cave of the Sybil, Cuma

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In the spring of 2019 I visited Agrigento in Sicily, a huge, ancient pilgrimage site of Greek temples. It was only at the end of the first day that I came upon the ruins of temples for Demeter, Persephone and Dionysus, what the sign called “the chthonic deities.” I felt a spirit there that I felt nowhere else in the complex. Only the outlines of modest shrines lie in the grass, not grand columns. They were interspersed with small well and altars with openings into the earth for simple offerings, mostly libations of wine and oil. Gifts of the earth returned to the earth. I was puzzled by how moved I felt there, not knowing why these were called the chthonic deities, knowing only that it was the oldest part of the site. They embodied the spirit of the Earth, I know now, and their cult probably pre-existed the Greeks.

I was back in Italy this spring and visited sacred sites at Pompeii, Paestum, Tarquinia, Rome and others, but the place where I was probably most moved was at the temple of Apollo at Cuma. There are five Sybils in the Sistine Chapel, considered the prophetesses of the classical world; one of them is from Cuma.

The morning I arrived at Pozzuoli near Cuma, I headed down the hill to the centre of town to find the bus. I asked the locals for directions in my broken Italian. Ahead they told me. Another block. Around a corner. Finally, I stopped a woman about my age coming out of an automotives shop. She spoke English. Oh, she said, I don’t think there is a bus. Too early in the season. But let’s check with my friend. We went back into the shop she had just exited.

This extranjera (stranger, foreigner) wants to go to Cuma. How can we help her?

Her friend pulled up the bus schedule on their computer. No bus to Cuma, he confirmed. Well maybe I can take a taxi? The two of them conferred in a blizzard of Italian. No, no, my newfound friend said. And her friend chimed in. No, no taxi. I’ll take you she said. Let’s walk back and get my car. She showed me her work studio and then we hopped in her little Volkswagon. It turns out Vanda Ferrante was an artist, (I do contemporary art, she told me), and she lived right beside Cuma.

As we sped wildly through the roundabouts to get to Cuma, Vanda gave me a running history of the area—the early Greeks, the Roman road we were on, all the ruins along the way, the volcanic lake, and on. She dropped me at the gate with a hearty buona giornata! and disappeared. Not unlike a winged creature in a chariot out of Greek mythology. I still haven’t been able to locate her on the internet.

When I arrived at Monte di Cuma, I made my way up the Sacred Way to the first terrace and then the upper terrace and the temple to Apollo. (In antiquity the Sacred Way divided the temple sites from the daily life of the populace.) There was hardly anyone else at the site. The interpretive signs told the story. Though Greek in name, Cuma, like most sacred sites, is probably a composite of many layers. The Temple to Apollo wasn’t the first or the last shrine to be built there. The earliest were built by peoples whose names are forgotten. The Greeks built and rebuilt the temple to Apollo several times, then the Romans and finally the Christians. Only the bones of the basilica remain. What has remained constant in this place are the foundations: the mountain, the sea, the fields, and the sky. The wind blowing through the trees as it was the morning I was there. And the mingling of the voices of the people and the land through changes of fortunes, empires, and civilizations.

In Greek mythology Apollo was the older brother of Dionysos and the god of light, healing, prophecy, music and the arts. The chthonic deities were concerned with the central mysteries of life: The growing and the harvesting of things and of lives. Death and rebirth. Timeless questions.

As we celebrate this National Indigenous Peoples Day, may we listen for that mingling of voices. May we ask questions of Earth. May we honour the mystery.