The Manteis Project

The Intention: To Create Sound and light performance art that leaves people with a sense of profound connectedness and thoughtfulness regarding the world around them.

The “Meaning” of Manteis:

Professional diviners included dream‐interpreters and above all seers, manteis, who specialized in sacrificial divination but no doubt claimed a broader competence.

manteis
A class of Druids, according to Diodorus Siculus. He reports that their role is to divine sacrifices and auguries. The word is Greek, and is likely being used instead of the Celtic term ouateis. Regarding the “ouateis” he said they were philosophers of nature and concerned with sacred rites. Diodorus Siculus mentions instead manteis, who perform sacrifices and divine auguries. However, manteis is, I believe, a Greek word for seer, and it is assumed that he is refering to the same class as Strabo. This is corroborated by the Irish word fáith (modern fáidh), which refers to a seer, and which is linguistically related to ouateis. When we picture the druid, we think of a magician, or a group in the woods, performing some sort of sacrifice or rite. This is not exactly accurate–what we are picturing is in fact the ovate. The role of the ovate, if we are to believe the texts, was to perform sacrifices, divine the future, and be natural philosophers–that is, to study nature and attempt to interpret its workings. Scientists, if you will.

return to the source…the source is silence