Peter Kingsley has written several books arguing that pre-Socratic philosophy has its origins in mysticism and shamanic experience. Kingsley argues that Parmenides (and others) may have participated in an initiatory shamanic tradition. The evidence Kingley presents for this claim (drawn from textual exegesis, history, and archaeology) is surprisingly convincing. Parmenides’s famous poem, which survives in fragmentary form, is a depiction (so Kingsley claims) of an ancient spiritual trial called “incubation.” This involved lying down in a dark, isolated place, in complete silence and stillness (hesychia). There is a tradition which flourished in Parmenides’s time, which conveyed the “geography” of what one would find in the spiritual world via the practice of incubation. Surviving Greek texts describing incubation state that when one undergoes the experience everything begins spinning and one hears a shrill, piping sound (a sound mentioned in Parmenides’s poem). This was known as the “sound of silence”: the sound behind the entirety of creation. Kingsley also tells us of the lesser-known philosopher-poet Epimenides (seventh or sixth century B.C.E.). According to legend, he slept for years in a cave and experienced visions of the underworld and of the “abode of Justice and Truth.” “Taken by Apollo” was the Greek expression for those who went on such “vision quests.” In the 1960s a first century C.E. bust of Parmenides was unearthed at Castellammare della Bruca in southern Italy, which bore the inscription “Parmenides, son of Pyres, Ouliadês, Natural Philosopher.” This clearly associates Parmenides with the cult of Apollo Oulios, or Apollo the Healer (Ouliades means “son of Apollo Oulios”). Apollo was known as the “god of lairs,” and of people who lie down in lairs. In other words, of those who undergo “incubation” in order to achieve the status of the iatromantis (“healer-prophet”), a term used to describe Epimenides.