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Interestingly enough, it was the slaying of the Python which proved to be both the thing that kept me away from Apollo for so long, and the thing that ultimately opened my heart to him. I had read many accounts of this pivotal scene, and many interpretations of it. A lot of authors present it as the masculine, rational, light, and heavenly overcoming the feminine, magical, dark, and earthy. It's presented along the same lines as Marduk killing Tiamat, or Yahweh slaying Leviathan. By this act, Apollo is said to usurp the Oracle, previously under the control of Gaea, Themis, and the Python. It's often seen as an act of patriarchal aggression. In fact, some authors have even said that it was nothing more than the mytholization of the warlike Dorians and their conquest of the original peaceful agrarian inhabitants of Hellas. Now, I rejected these interpretations a long time ago, but on some level, they still influenced me. It was hard to see Apollo as anything more than a macho, rational, repressive agent. As you well know, I am a Dionysos man through-and-through, and Dionysos is the very antithesis of this. This dichotomy was established in my mind, and Apollo always came off on the short end, when comparing the two. Well, when my mother lay sick, I prayed to Apollo. As a Hellenic Polytheist, I was well aware that he was the God I needed to pray to, as he was Paion, the Healer. Even though I'd never had a relationship with him, and had, in fact, been rather hostile to him in the past, he answered my prayer, and my mother recovered. I knew, instinctively, that I should write a hymn in his honor, as he is Musagates, the leader of the Muses, and Patron of the Arts - and it was the least I could do to praise him with my humble art. So, I cracked open my copy of Carl Kerenyi's The Gods of the Greeks, and read up on Apollo, thinking I'd find a suitable scene, whip off something quick, and be done with it. What I read really got to me. In it, he talked about Leto, and how Hera had cursed her, so that nowhere that had felt the sun would shelter her as she birthed her children. He quoted Hyginus (Fabulae 140) who recounted how the Python had harried Leto while she was pregnant, and tried to kill the babies inside her before Delos rose up from the sea to break Hera's curse. Four days after his birth, Apollo hunts down the Python, and slays it, avenging his beloved mother. That little piece of the puzzle made it all clear. He hadn't slain the Python as an act of jealousy over the Oracle, or to suppress dark, earthy, feminine power - but because his mother had been wronged, and he loved her so much, that he would suffer anything - even the humiliation of being a mortal's slave for a great year, the ultimate result of his defiant act - to avenge that wrong. He and his sister later kill the children of Niobe because she insults their mother. And I can totally understand that. I'm the same way with my mother. When my sister is rude to my mom - as 14 year olds often are - I have to stop myself from intervening. I still bristle though, because that's my momma, and you don't mess with her! Well, after that, I totally warmed to the God. I started
seeing all the things about him that I liked - his
association with crows and wolves; his long hair; his
prophetic qualities; his espousing rationality and
moderation (I love Dionysos, but I'm really not very
Dionysian); his connection to poetry and music and medicine;
his myths - which really are some of the best; and, the fact
that he was linked with Dionysos in so many ways. Well, it
all sort of clicked, and I have a new God in my personal
pantheon as a result. |
