Several women I have initiated into stick divination have inherited spiritual lineages that are oracular in nature. These show up to me in divinations I do for them. Rather than channeling, the wedeme tend to call that “speaking oracle.” These women are commonly allowing the voice of a Goddess to speak through them when they carry out “speaking oracle.” For this aspect of their training, the speaking oracle, they develop a protocol different from stick divination and are initiated back into that oracular lineage in a separate ritual. This is directly congruous with the classical oracular traditions of Greece and Italy.
The word “oracle” can be used for any person who speaks for a god, goddess, spirit or elemental being. Oracle also means the tools used to carry out said communication. Some say “orare” means to speak, others “to request”. It can also mean a place where said communications happens. Oracle is a form of divination.
In The Oscan Oracle: from the Ancient Janarra of the Moon, I wrote:
What is an oracle?
“Many people know the word oracle from the famous oracular sites of the ancient world at Dodona and Delphi, where a high priestess provided oracle in the form of prophecy or advice in response to questions asked in a formal setting. But oracle is also the term for the person who offers oracle.
Our ancient ancestors of the Italian spiritual lineage were oracles. Though they did not have formal temples and a hierarchical structure, they were skilled at interfacing with the spirit world and delivering that information to their community for its general well- being. Our ancestors spoke to the trees, listened to the wind, and prayed to the Earth.”
Some scholars believe the first oracle was the Egyptian Snake Goddess Wadjet (also spelled Uatchet), and trace the Minoan Snake Goddess, also oracular, back to this deity. Wadjet is also the eye of the moon.
Many of the oracles sang to get themselves into trance in order to hear. They also sang their prophecies. Singing is very important to the oracular traditions as we see from the previous blog post on Camenae where the priestesses of Angitia’s “charms” were actually songs.
Singing was much different to the ancient world than what many of us think of currently. Song was often the voice of the god or goddess or the otherworld. Singing could entrance, snag and catch you. Singing was magical. It could heal you. Behind the mask of the god or goddess or embodied entity, songs emerged. It was their voice, their movement which sang and danced while taking possession of the body of the human seer, priestess or priest. The god, goddess or entity embodied themselves through the voice of the song. The songs were a physical manifestation from the non-manifest realms. Healing happened at the spiritual level with the energy of a song from the otherworld.
Many cultures believed songs came from the fairy realms. Countless stories tell of humans being abducted by elemental beings where they emerged having learned the music of that realm.
Song was more than performance or background noise as we often think of it today. Singing was a spontaneous gift and a mystery. And it was often the women who sang. The women who gave oracle.
The Song of Kontomble
The inner voice of the universe is a song. The universe is full of song. The earth is full of song. When I was young the trees sang to me. I sang what they sang to me back to them.
After I had been voice divining for a time I had a dream where the kontomble gave me a song. In the dream, I was at the local park where I walk everyday but I was in a grove that is not there in this dimension. It was time out of time, a place in the fairy realm.
It was a space enclosed by redwood trees. I was in this enclosed space with other people, lots of them. I was singing with someone. The song resounded and circled within the grove. There were two parts to the song, meaning we were both singing separate parts at once but they went together, one was the humming of a haunting melody with no words, the other was a melody with the words, “calling on water.”
The sound was creamy and thick, soothing and nourishing. The voice was round and healing, a voice that contained substance and changed cellular makeup, that moved water, that healed the heart and the head. It was otherworldly. I was in a forest and I was singing. I was in a dark place and the voice created light. The crowd was receptive and euphoric. Eventually it became clear that it was kontomble I was singing with. She had given me the song.
I woke up from this dream in the middle of the night. My body was vibrating at a high frequency. All I could think was “where is this place and how can I get back there and how can I access this song?” It occurred to me I needed to remember this in the morning so I went into the bathroom and sang the song into the recorder in my phone quietly so as not to wake others. I sang both parts.
As much as oracular work is about speaking, singing, it is also about listening. It is about giving ourselves permission to listen or making time to listen to the voices from the other dimensional realms. It is also about trusting what we hear.
You can’t hear the songs if you don’t take the time to listen.
Freeing the voice
In many divinations female clients are encouraged to use their voices. In many more female clients are encouraged to sing. The 5th and the 2nd chakra are implicated in carrying out these prescriptions to open up and sing. They are also implicated in what is shut down when a woman cannot use her voice, hear her intuition and inner wisdom.
The second chakra womb space, whether one still has a uterus and ovaries or not, is a central power center for people born female especially as related to speaking her truth. In this area also lives pushed down anger or rage. For most women, this is an area that is often blocked. The true or authentic voice seems to need a clear 2nd and 5th chakra. This is challenging to maintain in a patriarchal world that loves to hate women. That harms women. That silences women. That does not support women.
If one is not listening to the 2nd chakra they cannot speak the 5th.
As important as it is for women to have their voices in general, in these divinations it is mostly the spiritual voices of the women that are being asked to be expressed. The listening to the communications from the other dimensional realms that also flows through these channels. They are not asking the women to only speak their truth but to speak the truth of what they hear and know from from their spiritual guides and allies.
Has the silencing of women also silenced the oracular tradition? What came first, the silencing of women or the silencing of the oracular tradition of women? Perhaps they happened together at the same time. Part of bringing back women’s voices also involves returning the oracular tradition to women.
The oracular tradition lets us know in a strong way that once women’s spiritual voices and wisdom were important and honored. When they were welcomed, supported and valued, women showed up to honor that with confidence and commitment. Having lost that message of value and importance means women who have these gifts often do not feel they have permission or even ability to perform them.
How many women are currently blocking, denying rejecting and resisting the songs and communication wanting to reach them from the spiritual dimensions?
If you are one of these The Seer comes to you and says: there is one inside of you who remembers how to listen. What does that feel like? Can you locate the spark of her? Where does her voice reside? Can you focus on that and ask it to grow, to speak?
She needs time and space to come forward. This doesn’t necessarily mean sitting still. She needs you to get quiet.
Call upon her and sing.
© Theresa C. Dintino 2026
