A typed ten paged document stapled together and is composed out of paper and black ink. The document, assumed lecture paper, is broken down into three paragraphs. Located at the top center of the page is the number -2-.  The document reads, “How did the classical form of the Asklepian myths evolved?” Graves say they concern ecclesiastical politics in northern Greece, Attica, and the Peloponnese, where chthonic shrines to local healers were center around springs, as at Trikka and Epidaurus. From these springs of Mother Earth flowed nourishing and cleansing waters, and snakes lived nearby to symbolize her life-giving powers. The myths hint at the suppression, in the name of the sun-god, Apollo, of a pre-Hellenic medical cult, presided over by moon-priestesses at oracular shrines of local Lapith heroes, incarnate as serpents or ravens. Among their names were Pheroneus (who became the Celtic raven-god, Bran), Erichthoneus, the serpent-tailed, and Koronis, the totem raven. The classical myth, as recorded by Pausanius, Pindar, adn Apollodorus, relates how Apollo fell in love with Koronis, daughter of Phlegyas, King of the Lapiths in Thessaly, and left a white raven (or crow) to guard her while he went to Delphi. But Koronis had a secret passion for Ischys, son of Elatus, and lay with him although already with child by Apollo. On discovering her infidekity, Apollo cursed the crow which became black, and killed Koronis. He was burning her, in the usual nomadic ritual, when he cut the child from her womb. He took his son, now named Asklepics, to Cheiron, the wise centaur, to be taught the arts of healing. Apollo with his arrows killed Ischys, who was also called Chylus. In Epidaurus there is a variant of the myth in which the child is exposed on a hill-side to be reared by a bitch until discovered in a divine aura by a shepherd. In Robert Graves' interpretation, Apollo's Hellenic priests were aided by the horse-toten tribe of Centaurs, hereditary enemies of the Lapiths, in overthrowing a Thessalian crow oracle, expelling the moon-priestess, and trying to assuage […]."
 

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