A review by mystimayhem
The Oracles of Apollo: Practical Ancient Greek Divination for Today by John Opsopaus

4.0

A fairly thorough book on both Greek Alphabet Oracle and the oracles of the seven sages. My only issue was the author's tendency to stray from faithful translations and traditions to insert his own worldviews and practices. It was interesting but maybe should have been marked and put in a separate section about his own preferences and workings. Some of it I understand. For instance, he wrote his own dismissals, for gods invoked, that were inspired by the PGM, which makes sense considering that most of the dismissals in the PGM that I've read involve going to a door and yelling "go away" or something similar. That makes sense and he drew from his own practices and experiences to flesh out that part of a ritual. It did seem that in a lot of the cases where his translations deviated from others it was to fit his own views or chosen messages and I wasn't a fan of the interjection he made about 'the threefold law' which has no place in a book about ancient Greek oracles.
But the book was well sourced, thorough, and insightful. Most of it, understandably, is instruction on how to use the divinatory systems he outlines, but I actually found the introductory bits to be the best (the first ~50 pages). He starts by giving historical context and etymological context which is very interesting.