Netherworld

It is possible to see what will happen to us in the future, or what forces are at work upon us? The ancients certainly believed this to be the case and so, in "Netherworld", Robert Temple examines and contrasts the traditions and techniques of divination of classical Greece and Rome, and those of ancient China. In his quest to find out more about the ancients and their beliefs, for the first time in living memory he ventured into the real, physical location of the Oracle of the Dead, the 'hell' of the ancient Greeks as found in "The Odyssey" and "The Aeneid" and, in a vivid and evocative account, describes his first journey down into this eerie, underground complex. What were the mysteries associated with Delphi and the other oracles of the ancient world? What other methods did the Greeks and Romans have for foretelling the future? After a fascinating study to find the answers to these questions, Temple turns to the Chinese oracular syste, the I Ching, which, intriguingly seems to be a genuine intuition and something that, even today, we do not fully appreciate. "Netherworld" is a gripping, and sometimes breathtaking, examination of the prophetic underside of human history and of human attitudes towards fate.