Up: [[Mythology and Fairy Tales]] Created: 2022-12-11 Rilke’s [[Poem - The Sybil - Rainer Maria Rilke]] is breathtakingly evocative and gorgeous. His poetry touches me. I connect to his poems, they feel personal. Maybe that’s enough to say. I’ve added Rilke to my Important [[People]]. I thought a Sybil had to do with Greek mythology, but didn’t know anything else. It turns out that Sibyl is actually the correct spelling for an Ancient Greek prophetess. Rilke used the woman’s name version so I’ve explored both here. Encyclopedia Britannica says a Sybil was a prophetess *of prodigious old age, uttering predictions in ecstatic frenzy*. And yes, from Greek and Roman mythology. Rilke did an amazing job of evoking her through words. Sibyl can be used as a noun to mean fortune teller or prophetess. Computer hackers do something called a Sybil attack, but it’s named after the book *Sybil* about a woman with multiple personalities. I remember reading that book as a teenager and being very moved by the horrible childhood abuse that led to the woman’s dissociative identity disorder. It turns out that the book was fiction. The woman in the case, whose real name was Shirley Mason, made up the personalities to gain the attention of her therapist, Connie Wilbur, who was interested in multiple personalities. Her ploy worked. Wilbur started giving her therapy 14-18 hours a week, paid the rent on her home, ate with her, and bought her clothes. When Mason finally recanted, Wilbur and the writer of the book were so far into the project that Wilbur treated the recantation as Mason simply wanting to avoid going deeper in her therapy. I can’t find it anywhere, but wonder if the choice of Sybil as a pseudonym for Shirley Mason had its roots in the Sibyls of Greek mythology. Perhaps the writer and/or the doctor believed that the original Sybil’s predictions were indicators of possession by other personalities.