Odysseus is eager to return to Ithaca. But first he must secure an oracle from the dead seer Teiresias. To meet him he visits the virgin forest of Persephone, where there are tall poplars and fruitless weeping willows, where the Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus rivers meet the River Acheron. In this gate of Hades Odysseus uses a magic ritual to invoke the dead seer and learn what the future holds. Homer and other ancient writers describe the Necromanteion as located near the shores of the Lake Acherousia, where the rivers of the Underworld meet and the dead descend to Hades. Somewhere around here, in a cave or an opening in the ground, people performed ritual ceremonies since the prehistoric period to communicate with the souls of the dead, who were able to foresee the future once they became free of their bodies.