Tag: prophecy

Londo Mollari:

Now, if I may ask: does this torment end when you leave, or am I going to have to spend the rest of my life paying for one little mistake?

Elric the Techno-mage:

Oh, I’m afraid you have to spend the rest of your life paying for your mistakes. Not this one, of course; it’s trivial. I have withdrawn the spell, but there will be others.

Londo Mollari:

What are you talking about?

Elric the Techno-mage:

You are touched by darkness, Ambassador. I see it as a blemish that will grow with time.

I could warn you, of course, but you would not listen.

I could kill you, but someone would take your place.

So I do the only thing I can: I go.

[Starts to turn away then turns back.]

Oh, I believe it was an endorsement you wanted. A word or two, a picture, to send to the folks back home confirming that you have a destiny before you.

Londo Mollari:

Yes, it was just a thought, nothing more.

Elric the Techno-mage:

Well, take this for what little it will profit you:

As I look at you, Ambassador Mollari, I see a great hand reaching out of the stars. The hand is your hand. And I hear sounds—the sounds of billions of people calling your name.

Londo Mollari:

[Brightens.]

My followers?

Elric the Techno-mage:

[Scowls.]

Your victims.

[Turns and walks away.]

— “The Geometry of Shadows” – Babylon 5, Season 2 (1995)

Traditional prophecy has a distinct relationship to time, but telling the future is only part of it. The prophet does not say that the stock market will fall next October, or that some celebrity will soon marry. Rather, the prophet speaks of things that will be true in the future because they are true in all time. The prophet disrupts the mundane in order to reveal the eternal.

— Trickster Makes This World, p. 284

Fortune-telling was a central part of many ancient classical religions, knowledge of the future, or a least a belief in having knowledge of the future, providing some bulwark against the fragility of life. Whole cities and states officially consulted the great oracles such as the Pythia at Delphi. The fabulously wealthy King Croesus of Lydia had many centuries before, according to Herodotus, asked the Pythia whether he should attack Persia. He had received a typically ambiguous response: “If you do, you will destroy a great empire.” Heartened by this, he immediately attacked, only to discover that the empire the Pythia was referring to was his own.

Even Alexander had sought the oracle at Siwa to discover if his campaigns would be successful. This may seem like a piece of stage magic today, but the word of the Siwa oracle not only helped Alexander to resolve his course of action, but likely paved the way for his conquests. In the same way, not long after the Chaldean oracles of Babylon began predicting his doom, he did indeed die, and the same doleful prophesying had probably helped to oust Darius before that. Prophecies could be self-fulfilling. Enemies would attack a man marked out for bad luck. A man apparently blessed would be left alone. Oracles, to put it simply, worked, and many of all types and importance vied with each other. At the greatest, such as at Delphi and Siwa, kings themselves might send for answers, receiving back those cryptic messages from the god via a human intermediary, usually a priest or priestess absorbed in an ecstatic trance or under the influence of psychotropic drugs. Romans would seek answers in the entrails of sacrificed animals, as interpreted by their augurs.

— The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, pp. 182-183

Emphasis mine.