We all secretly venerate the ideal of a language which in the last analysis would deliver us from language by delivering us to things.
M. Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World
In a study published some years ago, J.-P. Vernant drew attention to the fundamental distinction Greek thought makes between spoken and all other modes of divination. It is a difference that reflects certain givens of ancient social and political structure, and that has its roots in the marked orientation of Greek society towards open discourse. What he has in mind as a paradigm of oral divination is the question-and-answer format of many ancient oracles. He argues that this provides far more direct and more ‘democratic’ access to the will of deity or the way of things than do styles of consultation dependent on interpretative schemes which, because of their indirect nature, are accessible only to a small and privileged group. The fine art of pyromancy, for instance, deploys a framework of transformational rules and techniques whose complexity removes the interpretation of ‘fire signs’ (empura sēmata) from the realm of ordinary skills and makes it instead the special province of a priestly caste, such as that of the Iamidai at Olympia.