Mayuan Oracle

Minara, her Seat, a nineteenth-century painting of the Mayuan Oracle by Tamnas Firukon

The Mayuan Oracle was a priestess and prophetess at the temple of Visil at Mayua, in the mountains of central Semeria. Over a period of about 1500 years, the cult of the Oracle at Mayua became the foremost oracular cult in the Isles of Velar. The Oracle was a woman, known always as Minara, and her prophecies were highly sought after all across the Sea of Velar and as far afield as Hysera and Andamonia. She became closely involved in the election of the kings of Semeria, which, in tandem with the spread of Christianity across the archipelago, led ultimately to the demise of the Visilan cult in Mayua and the disappearance of the Oracle.

Early evidence

The town of Mayua was founded in about 800 BC to serve as the stronghold of a dynasty who controlled the mountain passes of central Semeria. It is unclear whether the presence of the Oracle predated the establishment of the fortified town. In the Sermtenykon ("the Road of Fire"), a poem from the seventh century BC, Uren the Walker, the poem's protagonist, visits Mai-uya "to receive instruction." This is generally considered an early reference to the Mayuan Oracle, and some scholars argue that it is a late attestation of an already widely-known cultic phenomenon at Mayua.

Nature of the oracle

The great majority of ancient and medieval sources describe the Oracle as a woman, and many explicitly state that no man was ever the Oracle at Mayua. Some controversy surrounds four sources originating in the early Hyseran Empire, between about 510 and 380 BC, which refer to the Oracle as "a young boy." Oracular scholar Miró Terúon has argued that the early Mayuan cult was not solely composed of women, and that this was later erased from Velaran sources, but this stance is not widely held. Others believe that the Hyseran sources, being among the most distant witnesses, are simply in error and have confused Mayua with other Velaran oracles.

No name is known for any member of the oracular cult other than that given to the Oracle herself, Minara, translated as "one who speaks." Personal names were most likely abandoned upon induction, as is the case at several other Velaran oracles, but Mayua is unusual for the total absence of pre-oracular names in surviving sources.

Functions

Arches alongside the Oracle's Road

The Visilan cult at Mayua served the chief Velaran god of the sky who, because of his association with the winds, was thought to possess knowledge of events yet to pass. The cult's primary role was to maintain Visil's favourable disposition so that the Oracle could consult him for wisdom and prophecies. There is little direct attestation of the mechanisms through which this was achieved. Much has been assumed from comparison of other, better-attested oracular cults. Certain spices, such as frankincense and malabathrum, were provided as tribute by the leaders in Mayua for use in the Visilan rituals, and many other gifts were bestowed on the Oracle with petitions or as thanks for her guidance. The numbers of pilgrims travelling to Mayua increased dramatically over time. In times of hardship, as many as ten thousand visited the town in a year to pray at the temple and petition the Oracle. The crowds reached their largest in April, at the time of Timras Sanasiuarukon, the Festival of Felicitous Skies. Most pilgrims came on foot, although some travelled on horseback or with a cart. However, none were permitted to travel along the Oracle's Road from the town to the temple itself, a distance of 5 kilometres (3.1 mi), except barefoot.

Consultation of the Oracle by Velaran royalty had become regularised by 362, when the king of Tavlar dedicated a stele in Mayua as thanks for a favourable prophecy. Minara became the preferred oracle of the Semerian nobility, almost to the exclusion of other oracles on the island, and the kings of Semeria and their agents were regular visitors to Mayua. People of means would travel great distances to consult the Mayuan Oracle. In the first century AD, Mayua was visited by the emperor of Hysera, either Tomaaron or his successor Camazezin, who came to petition Minara.

The relationship between Mayua and the Semerian elite deepened in the first half of the first millennium AD. The monarchy of Semeria evolved into an elective one in the second and third centuries AD. It had been common to consult Minara before selecting a new king; it now became custom. By 400, Mayua had become the venue for the elections, and the king-elect would make the barefoot pilgrimage to the temple to present himself to Minara in private. She would then pronounce on his fitness to rule. If the aspirant was rejected, a new election was generally held to find a more suitable candidate.

Dispersal of the cult

Mayua's close association with the kingship drew it into the power struggle between the pagan Semerian kings and the Christian Szantir I of Parthenope, who desired to unite the Isles of Velar under his sole rule. His father had seized the duchy of Tumil, in western Semeria, and this entitled Szantir to a vote in the elections. In 812, following the death of Nilzha of Borsem, an election was convened in Mayua at which Szantir sought the kingship. The other Semerian dukes refused to allow him, as a Napocian and Christian, to contest the kingship. He nevertheless travelled barefoot to the temple and presented himself to Minara, who turned him away with one word: "Out." The dukes elected Likanton of Txir as their overlord instead.

That same year, Szantir returned to exact his vengeance. He besieged the city, driving away an army of Likanton's which sought to defend the Oracle, and ultimately Mayua was betrayed by a citizen whose son had been taken prisoner. The temple was razed, its treasury ransacked and much of the town burned. Minara herself, and possibly the entire Visilan cult, were believed to have escaped, but it spelled the end of Mayua's importance. Accounts persisted of people consulting the Oracle, but her location after the destruction of Mayua is unknown.

Legacy

Engraving of Likanton of Txir on a commemorative stone at Mayua

The Mayuan Oracle had come to dominate the market for prophecy in medieval Velar. Although initially just one of many, it had become the lynchpin in the Velaran oracular tradition. After 812, other oracles across the archipelago experienced surges in pilgrimage as distraught people sought guidance, but it was not to last. Numbers soon entered a steep decline, exacerbated by the Christianisation of the archipelago, and the tradition had become a rare, fringe practice by the turn of the millennium, with only a handful of oracles surviving.

Nonetheless, it seems that pagan worship continued at Mayua for some time after the temple's destruction. Certainly the city was not abandoned, despite the claims of Parthenopean writers. A commemorative engraving depicting Likanton of Txir on horseback has been found at Mayua which cannot predate his election in 812 and was most likely carved some time after the destruction of the temple. It is thought that the inscription invoked Visil's protection in his contest with Szantir for the overlordship of Semeria. Archaeological exploration at Mayua has yielded vast quantities of votive offerings that accumulated over centuries, and it is believed that a good portion even of the post-dispersal material, with origin points across Teudallum, was devotional in function.

The consultation of the Mayuan Oracle was a fixture of ancient and medieval Velaran literature and remained so even after the formal dispersal of the cult. Minara and the worship of Visil at Mayua has continued to capture the imagination of artists and writers into the modern era. The nineteenth-century painting Minara, her Seat, by Tamnas Firukon, is among the most famous representations of the Oracle, although its accuracy is contested. References and dedications, both direct and oblique, persist, such as the series of ships named Mayua (most notably the eighteenth-century, 88-gun warship sunk at Kalodin in 1769) in honour of the town and the oracle that made its reputation.