Teiresias, the blind Prophet

For this entry, I am going to write about Teiresias or also known as Tiresias. Teiresias is one of the characters that appear in the ancient play by Sophocles, “Oedipus Rex” or “Oedipus the King”. He was a blind prophet and seer of Thebes. He appeared in many Greek myths but here I am going to only focus on "Oedipus Rex".Basically, Dr. Edwin asked us to find out about Teiresias on the net because Teiresias was a unique person who had experienced what other men have not experienced. So, I surfed through the net and I found out some interesting info about him.

I think it’s best if I tell a little bit about the story of Oedipus Rex. Oedipus, the king of Thebes, called upon Teiresias to aid in the investigation of the killing of the previous king Laios. At first, Teiresias refused to give a direct answer and instead hinted that the killer is someone Oedipus really did not wish to find. However, after being provoked to anger by Oedipus' accusation first that he had no foresight and then that Tiresias was involved in the murder, he revealed that it was Oedipus himself who had unwittingly committed the crime. Outraged, Oedipus threw him out of the palace, but then afterwards he realized the truth.

So, basically Teiresias was blind. But the blindness was not in born. There are a lot of stories about the causes to his blindness. One of the famous one would be that he was simply blinded by the gods for revealing their secrets. The other one would be that Teiresias was blinded by Goddess Athena after he stumbled onto her bathing naked. However, Teiresias was given a supernatural power which enabled him to understand birdsong, thus a gift of augury.

The most interesting part about Teiresias is that he was the only human being who had been a male and a female during his life. He was not a transvestite or transsexual or anything like that. But, there were myths behind his transformation. He was indeed born as a male. However, as the myth has it, as Teiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes, he hit the pair a smart blow with his stick. Hera, the goddess, was not pleased, and she punished Teiresias by transforming him into a woman. As a woman, Tiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children, including Manto, who also possessed the gift of prophecy. According to some versions of the tale, Lady Teiresias was a prostitute of great renown. After seven years as a woman, Teiresias again found mating snakes; depending on the myth, either she made sure to leave the snakes alone this time or trampled on them. As a result, Teiresias was released from his sentence and permitted to regain his masculinity.

It is kind of interesting to actually know about how a human being can possibly have two genders during his life time. I am not promoting transsexual or transvestite in that sense. But can you just imagine how interesting for a person to experience both lives as a man and a woman. But I believe there’s always the bad side of it, right?