• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

  • About
    • Ambassador from the future
  • Past lives
    • Professional
      • Volans
      • SustainAbility
      • CounterCurrent
      • Boards & Advisory Boards
      • Awards & Listings
    • Personal
      • Family
      • Other Influences
      • Education
      • Photography
      • Music
      • Cycling
    • Website
  • Speaking
    • Media
    • Exhibitions
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Reports
    • Articles & Blogs
    • Contributions
    • Tweets
    • Unpublished Writing
  • Journal
  • Contact
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Delphi By Skin Of Our Teeth

John Elkington · 13 March 2020 · Leave a Comment

Post 2 of 7.

Delphic tree, by some part of the Castalian spring watercourse, from which Elaine and I drank, in hope of insight and foresight
As we arrive, an illuminated landscape downhill
Pine trees infested with pine processionary moth
The Serpent Column, headless
The Athenian Treasury
Looking back across the site, the landscape humming with bees
Part of the Temple of Apollo, where the Pythia sat – though our guide, Jeremy Paterson, disputed reports of gases intoxicating priestesses sitting on a tripod above a sacred chasm. I still like the story : )
I get away from the group, in search of peace, quiet and an overview
The Temple of Athena Pronaia, which we at least glimpsed in 1970
Ditto
What question would you have had to ask the Pythia to get her to predict this horizon?
Or horseless carriages?
Maybe the future is encoded in peeling paint on a door?

Finally made it to Delphi, 50 years after we arrived to find the site closed – as explained in a previous post. The site was simply humming with bees this time, though the sight of pine processionary moth cocoons in some of the trees was distressing. The museum closed before we could get to it – and not too long afterwards the site as a whole was closed. But we had moved on by then.

A truly wonderful visit, with relatively few other people visiting such sights as the temples of Athena Pronaia and, higher up, of Apollo. A fuller account of the site’s history can be found here. One bit of the recent story that Jeremy (Paterson) challenged was the idea that gases from a chasm under the site had helped induce a state of trance in the priestesses. I confess, though, that I still find the explanation seductive – even if many shamans can get there unassisted.

As we travel, with a fair number of books in our baggage train, I have been reading A Rising Man, by Abil Mukherjee. A wonderfully engaging portrait of Calcutta back in 1919, just after WWI, with a simmering independence movement that would take another 30 years to come to blood-spattered fruition.

And I find myself constantly wondering what it is about today’s world, apart from COVID-19, the gathering climate emergency and the exponential undermining of the natural world, that we ought to be paying more attention to as clues to the future in the present?

Uncategorized

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Introduction

I began this blog with an entry reporting on a visit to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, on 30 September 2003. The blog element of the website has gone through several iterations since, with much of the older material still available.

Like so many things in my life, blog entries blur the boundaries between the personal and the professional. As explained on this site’s Home Page, the website and the blog are part platform for ongoing projects, part autobiography, and part accountability mechanism.

In addition, my blogs have appeared on many sites such as: Chinadialogue, CSRWire, Fast Company, GreenBiz, Guardian Sustainable Business, and the Harvard Business Review.

Recent Comments

  • PATRICK DICK on Reminder of Glencot Years
  • Milton Marino Gómez Ortiz on Tickling Sharks
  • John Elkington on Green Swans A “Must-Read”

Journal Archive

About

John Elkington is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. He is currently Founding Partner and Executive Chairman of Volans, a future-focused business working at the intersection of the sustainability, entrepreneurship and innovation movements.

Contact

john@johnelkington.com  |  +44 203 701 7550 | Twitter: @volansjohn

John Elkington

Copyright © 2025 John Elkington. All rights reserved. Log in