Apollo
In darkness you may call to him.
In pain he will heal you.
In your search for inspiration, he is your god.
In expression of your soul, he is forever present.
Musician to Gods.
Healer of the sick.
Bringer of death.
Bringer of civilization.
Let the light of life, and the inspiration of art be my companion.
Bless my heart and soul with your presence, mighty Apollon.
Lord of Light and Civilization
Apollon is, of all things, a civilized God. A god of art, music, healing and disease. A god of light and reason. A god of the mind and perfection of the soul and body. He is a god of refined thought and logical thinking much as Athena is, but not a god of war, civil or not. He is a God for both genders, a god of inclusion and purification. He was said to be the Sun God in some instances, but this is not the case.
The very light of reason is Apollo. A god among gods is he whose song lightens the hearts of man and whose light guides us through the perils that await all of us on our journey from birth to death. Yet it is Apollo himself that also embodies many of the ills that plague us. Ills that make us stronger. This is a bit of a strange thing to contemplate. The worship of a god that embodies disease as well as healing, but in truth, this is part of the path I walk in my spiritual life. The dark aspects of the Gods are just as important to understand and contemplate as the light aspects, and it is in this understanding that the Gods reveal themselves to us.
The Lord of light, who is often seen as the light of day, the light of the sun rather than the sun itself, is a god to be approached carefully. To understand the aspects of this god that are light, reasoning, and pure is to also understand the darker sides of that light. Darker sides that are not necessarily part of his domain, but which one must learn of and embrace none the less. The night is not his domain, but a most ancient domain belonging to the goddess night herself, whom we call Nyx. War, which is so much a part of civilization, is also not his domain, but that of Ares and Athena, the bloody act of war and the war in defense of nation. Disease, however, does fall under his domain. But why?
I can only imagine that to the Gods, life is a valued thing, be it microbial or complex life, and that as a result, what we look upon as disease is simply the survival of a different order of life. Does a being of eternal life and infinite wisdom and power see our order of life as more valuable than that of a virus? Is the balance of life, in the eyes of a god, more important than an individual species or an individual being? I would wager to say yes, and in the eyes of this god, I think it a very important question to ask, because it leads back to the way the world works. To the cruelty and pains we often feel and see all around us. But I may be leading you astray here, I do not blame the gods for the ills that befall me. I may sometimes get mad and ask them why, but I know there is no real answer, not one that can ever really satisfy. The balances of the cosmos must, I believe, come first in the eyes of the Gods, and that sometimes means we get to see the dark side of the gods, the side that can strike down as well as lift up, inflict pain as well as heal it, hate as well as love.
Musician and Artist
I am no musician, but my mind is always full of music. Strange and wonderful melodies that I cannot express, and it pains me. For too long I have left my artistic talents lie fallow, and as I begin to open myself to that again, I know it is through his influence. I know that it is through this that I will finally make the connection to him that I so desperately need. In the expression of the artistic soul, mankind is different from animals. In this expression of the fancies of the mind, we release our frustrations with those things we cannot understand or cannot control. In this, Apollo combines his most powerful aspects, for in this artistic power there is healing.
Healer
In quiet desperation. In pain I cannot possibly convey in words, I have called to him and felt relief. I don't know how, but I feel myself cured of much that ales me these days, all but the emotional and psychological trauma that my life has left me with, and here too there is a door for me to enter. A door into the inner depths of my soul where the Gods await my contact. A door into self healing and recognition of my own divinity and importance to the world around me. A door to discovering my place in the world.
I speak of my own divinity, yet it is not the kind of divinity the Gods are a part of, rather my own importance to myself and those I love. My divinity is my own recognition of my own worth and importance. It is the desire to heal myself and be the best me I can. I call on Apollon for this.
Nature God
In a recent discussion of this God, it occurred to me how different my view of him really is from that of so many others. Apollon is, if anything, viewed as the civilized and eminently Greek god who fosters music and healing, yet we see in Apollon the pastoral God, for in healing there are ties to nature, are not the herbs and medicines we use to heal ourselves part of the very nature of life on earth? A God of harvests? Perhaps not in the same way that Demeter is, but he is a god for whom the harvesting of beneficial substances from our forests, as well as the preservation of those wild places that are dear to his twin sister Artemis, which can one day provide the cures to such horrible diseases as AIDS and Cancer.
Artemis is the goddess of these wild places and the creatures that inhabit them, but Apollon is the God of its wealth for the medical arts. A god of natural healing and the art to use it to its fullest. He is also a god of domestication, for farming and the domestication of animals lead to our own civilization as a species. We learned to keep with us the sources of food we required, freeing up our time to develop art and culture. Here too we see a different aspect of this god, as god of domesticated beasts where his sister is goddess of wild ones.
Artemis
One cannot ignore Artemis when dealing with Apollon. They are tied to each other, they are like two sides of one coin in many ways. Representing the same things from different perspectives. One representing man looking out into nature, the other nature looking in on man. With Artemis so closely associated with the moon, it is not odd at all that eventually Apollon became associated with the light of the sun, and eventually even supplanted Helios as the Sun God, and while I still see the two as separate beings, the late Greeks and Romans saw him in the light of the sun, the light of civilization ever tied to nature for its dependence on it yet forever striving to widen the gap between them while Artemis reminded us that no gap could ever eliminate the need we have of the bounty of mother earth and all of her many secrets.