In Homer's time traditions had already taken shape about witches (Medea, Circe), healers (Chiron), and above all prophets (Tiresias). Though the well-known sources are later in time, it is beyond doubt that at about the same era other traditions took shape, such as that of the Orphic prophets and oracles, and that of the Sibylline Oracles.

In one version of the myth Maenads dismembered Orpheus and hurled his head and lyre into the Hebrus. The waves threw it up at Antissa in Lesbos, and there, in a cave of Dionysus, the head went on singing and giving oracles. From that time on, talking heads and divination were connected with the Orphic mysteries. The teachings of Orphism, which emerged from the contact of the Thraco-Phrygian cult of Dionysus with Hellenic religious elements, had a cosmological and eschatological content. The initiates were called Orphotelestai, and practised prophecy and healing. In Classical times, to judge by Plato's views, they enjoyed no particular esteem. Again, the Sibyl, originally thought of as a female prophet from Marpessus on the Hellespont or from Erythrae in Ionia, prophesied in the Oriental fashion, that is to say, she went from town to town and from country to country. According to Pausanias, she also went to Delphi, where she was called Herophile. Her prophecies were carried to Cyme in Campania and to Rome. In time the impression was formed that this was a female priest who had lived many years before, and various collections with her prophecies were compiled, to survive even after the end of the ancient world.

The Hellene prophets of historical times considered that they belogned to families who drew their descent from some mythical person. The importance their contemporaries attached to this descent was undoubtedly very great, as we can see from the case of Tisamenus, who managed to obtain considerable influence at Sparta in the 5th century B.C. purely by belonging to the family of the Melampodids. Other important prophet families of the Peloponnese were the Iamidae and Clytiadae of Olympia; in Boeotia, the Bacids maintained their reputation up to Pausanias' time. We know of no corresponding families at Athens, though the Eumolpidae and the Kerykes (who controlled the shrine at Eleusis) may well have exercised similar functions. There is also a later reference connecting the Amphiareum at Oropus with the family of the orator Aeschines. At Didyma in Ionia, the Branchidae were so closely connected with the oracle that it is often cited by their name. Finally, in Caria there was a celebrated family, the Telmissioi, and in Sicily the Galeotai, specializing in the interpretation of "dreams and portents". Convergent with magic and the occult world was early Pythagorean thought, which developed more obviously in this direction with Empedocles and Neopythagoreanism.