I couldn’t stop thinking about the cookies. Colette includes instructions for making a modern version of these confections using a big white bowl, a wooden spoon and a few very specific ingredients. I went back to look over the recipe and a sentence about Apollo and the Delphic Oracle caught my eye. I felt compelled to look up the Oracle immediately, and when I saw the image of the Pythia, I saw myself. I was transfixed.

Priestess of Delphi (1891) John Collier

I immediately did a screen grab of John Collier’s painting and sent it around to five of my closest friends asking them to tell me if they ‘got’ anything from looking at the image. That’s all I said; nothing more. Todd wrote back within five minutes with this: “It’s you, isn’t it?” And a week later when my trusted friend and mentor Angelika finally looked at the image, she started shrieking, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”, and she told me I must go to Delphi, I must go soon, and I must go alone. And as if that wasn’t enough, Dr. Stephanie, a natural clairvoyant and healer, wrote: “Wow! This is a powerful image. I can see you in there––aspects of your strength that were still intact before there was a distortion. Reconnecting with this aspect of yourself will begin to heal the distortion that occurred between then and now.”

I never made the cookies. But I did book my trip to Greece.