Greece 4

We need you for the war! We still need you for the awakening! You signed on for this. You knew the terms and conditions. 

Yes, I sigh, in a sort of resignation. This deal is a ball and chain, no offense. Tell me about the attacks, about the hyper-sensitivity that nearly drove me off the cliff. I'm no coward but there are limits to what my mind can handle. I'm of no use to the war effort when psychologically and spiritually burnt out.

Ever the dramatist, the drama queen!

Their laughter is like a spring, a waterfall. As always they seem good-natured and yet detached. Lacking physical vessels of course. How can you tell? 

You are important for the war, for the war on consciousness!

You walk among humans as a servant of the light. A lighthouse. You work as an antagonist for the shadow of man, yes that means you are always under some form of attack. See it as proof of your radiance!

Where is your sincere desire for ultimate freedom gone?

To once and for all transcend the wheel of death and rebirth?

Yes, you are needed for the war, for the great awakening, yet you do this for your own redemption.

Can you reconnect to that calling. That mission?  

This is starting to sound like a distorted Ayahuasca ceremony guys. I'm caught up in this grand duality play and I want out. The whole thing seems frightfully futile and yet here I am getting asked to go back into the play and put on a good show, be a good sport. I want out!

Take me back to the island. I need to stay in Greece. 

You are karmically bound to the fate of the earth. You are a generator of the new. Going through with your plan will only tighten the grip of your fate. If you succumb to this victim-hood you will lose your lead, lose your way, lose your ticket to play. Lather, rinse and repeat dear friend.  

My plan. My fate. This was not going well. The past was seeping in again. The pain. The trauma. Wake up! Wake up!

Greece 2

 A hawk flew over me as I lay there, alone on the deserted beach, hovering in the air, my anima. It's a good omen for me, I've always thought that, ever since i was a child. Any bird of prey that appears is a good omen.

Wandering through the pine groves, how can I keep from singing? I'm not actually singing as I walk but my body is singing from the hike.

The mountain is silent in the midday sun. The trees have their own song and I'm listening now. The heat is really getting to me, I'm sweating profusely but my mission is to reach the chapel, the white unblemished chapel. 

I'm not thinking as I climb higher and higher, its steep but I'm on a strange pilgrimage to the little chapel. No pain, no thoughts. The sea is disappearing from sight below me. The essential oils of pine and thyme are rich and heady in the air. My body is singing and sweating as I climb. I'm on a pilgrimage. I have to get to that holy place.

My breath is heaving, sweat is pouring out of me as I get slowly closer. This could be dangerous, there is no one for miles around, no one knows I'm here. The heat shimmers in the air around the rocks, a lizard scuttles off the path where I set my feet. The hawk is nowhere to be seen now, there are no birds, the white walls of the chapel can be seen up ahead.

The church is not particularly pretty, I have been to a few already on the island. This one is small and hidden away high on the mountainside, secluded by stately pine trees, the path up to the courtyard is paved. The stone is worn down by the years, slated by the seasons, by the salt carried in on the wind. 

Who knows when last anyone visited this sacred place. I open the blue door and the air inside is old and stale but the light falling in through the window illuminates the far wall of icons. There are various portraits of the saints, Jesus and Mary, just like in any other Greek church but there is something different about this one. 

I practically collapse onto the stone floor from exhaustion. I made it. The silence of the place is disturbed by my labouring breath, I need to regain my composure. A soft breeze flows in through the open door, cooling me somewhat. I lye there on the chapel floor, the saints are watching me from the walls but they are not judging me. 

I sit up, the place is only a couple square metres wide. Simple chapel, made with dedication, plain upholstery, no glamour and yet there is an ambiance pure, true, honest. It fills me with respect which startles me, I rarely feel a reverence such as this and I start to pray, kneeled on the floor. 

I pray for my family, I pray for my friends. I beseech the icons to watch over them. I thank the saints for the life I have lived, I thank them for the consolidation. Here where i am no longer mystical. Here where I am no longer clairvoyant. Here I pray silently and in earnest because I feel I must. 

I do not pray about the many years, I do not pray about the pain. I do not question my fate. Then I just sit there, alone in the remote chapel, alone on the remote island. 

For a moment I hope to die there. Its been a long time since I thought about death. There was a time when an ending was always on my mind. I want to die there on the floor of the tiny church in the arms of the icons, in the arms of the Mother Mary. I want to die for the love that is lost though its not a bitter or wretched feeling at all. Just a kind of surrender. 

Greece 1

 I'm ordering my takeaway at the street bar, one pita gyros and a Greek salad, the young guy recognizes me from earlier in the week and the older guy comes over and pats me on the arm, just for a moment his hand gently squeezes my shoulder. He smiles affectionately at me but it's as if I'm the stranger who you can't place in that scene. The stranger who you want to be close to but know you cannot. I'm touched by his gesture somehow. 

The younger guy asks whether I need a fork while a woman, probably the mother throws a salad together and I ask for two forks even though I am alone. I could have had a girlfriend waiting at the hotel, the salad could be for her. I don't know why I would want to give that impression and to be honest I don't. I'm not embarrassed to be on the island by myself. The woman asks her son if I want a lot of olive oil on my salad and if I want crushed oregano. Just a bit please, I say it twice for both condiments. 

I'm standing there on the street waiting for my food, smoking a cigarette and I glance around cautiously for an ashtray but there is none. A middle-aged Greek sitting at the bar has been watching me. You can just put your cigarette out on the street he motions. See nobody cares! I laugh self consciously and stub it out by my feet. The moments there stick in my mind as I walk back up the streets to the hotel with my meal in my hand. The evening is setting in.

While eating on the balcony, I look up at the stars, I'm trying to make out the constellations. The big dipper is the only one I recognise. I'm reminded of Germany, laying out in the field at night with my sister and her then husband. My sister always calls it: the saucepan. Suddenly I'm determined to learn the other constellations, that is to spot them. I look on my phone and recognize the names, Draco, Cassiopeia, Orion, but there is too much light pollution even from this small village around me. I keep leaning out peering up at the night sky, then checking my phone but I give up after a while. Not as clear as in South Germany here. 

I'm strangely not philosophical, not mystical as I used to be. I'm not intimidated or even intrigued by the vastness of life. Not questioning my purpose or 'soul searching', that term makes me cringe a little. I feel consolidated and calm as I move from moment to moment. Making tea in the evening has become a tiny ritual, I smoke and read and watch some YouTube videos on my phone. 

My home is here now where there is no news, no energy price hikes or warmongering. Just the rituals of my days. I'm immune to the Dutch and Scandinavian tourists, sometimes they stare, sometimes they bustle, they carry some of their country with them. Their grey lives hang on them, linger in their aura's. Fortunately they are few, its mostly just me. 

The girl at the café starts making my decaf frappe as soon as she sees me. Just a hello is enough now whether in the morning or afternoon. It's like clockwork. I'm consolidated. Walking around the semi-deserted bay in the heat of the sun is like a meditation. I'm always immersed in the blue of the sea. I could spend hours going over the pain and trauma of the last few years but I'm untouched by them, I'm not bitter here. I'm pain-free now. I'm long lost. 

The Last Days of The Covidian Cult

https://cjhopkins.com/

This isn't going to be pretty, folks. The downfall of a death cult rarely is. There is going to be wailing and gnashing of teeth, incoherent fanatical jabbering, mass deleting of embarrassing tweets. There's going to be a veritable tsunami of desperate rationalizing, strenuous denying, shameless blame-shifting, and other forms of ass-covering, as suddenly former Covidian Cult members make a last-minute break for the jungle before the fully-vaxxed-and-boosted "Safe and Effective Kool-Aid" servers get to them.

Yes, that's right, as I'm sure you've noticed, the official Covid narrative is finally falling apart, or is being hastily disassembled, or historically revised, right before our eyes. The "experts" and "authorities" are finally acknowledging that the "Covid deaths" and "hospitalization" statistics are artificially inflated and totally unreliable (which they have been from the very beginning), and they are admitting that their miracle "vaccines" don't work (unless you change the definition of the word "vaccine"), and that they have killed a few people, or maybe more than a few people, and that lockdowns were probably "a serious mistake."

I am not going to bother with further citations. You can surf the Internet as well as I can. The point is, the "Apocalyptic Pandemic" PSYOP has reached its expiration date. After almost two years of mass hysteria over a virus that causes mild-to-moderate common-cold or flu-like symptoms (or absolutely no symptoms whatsoever) in about 95% of the infected and the overall infection fatality rate of which is approximately 0.1% to 0.5%, people's nerves are shot. We are all exhausted. Even the Covidian cultists are exhausted. And they are starting to abandon the cult en masse.

It was always mostly just a matter of time. As Klaus Schwab said, "the pandemic represent[ed] a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world."

It isn't over, but that window is closing, and our world has not been "reimagined" and "reset," not irrevocably, not just yet. Clearly, GloboCap underestimated the potential resistance to the Great Reset, and the time it would take to crush that resistance. And now the clock is running down, and the resistance isn't crushed ... on the contrary, it is growing. And there is nothing GloboCap can do to stop it, other than go openly totalitarian, which it can't, as that would be suicidal. As I noted in a recent column:

"New Normal totalitarianism — and any global-capitalist form of totalitarianism — cannot display itself as totalitarianism, or even authoritarianism. It cannot acknowledge its political nature. In order to exist, it must not exist. Above all, it must erase its violence (the violence that all politics ultimately comes down to) and appear to us as an essentially beneficent response to a legitimate 'global health crisis' ..."

The simulated "global health crisis" is, for all intents and purposes, over. Which means that GloboCap has screwed the pooch. The thing is, if you intend to keep the masses whipped up into a mindless frenzy of anus-puckering paranoia over an "apocalyptic global pandemic," at some point, you have to produce an actual apocalyptic global pandemic. Faked statistics and propaganda will carry you for a while, but eventually people are going to need to experience something at least resembling an actual devastating worldwide plague, in reality, not just on their phones and TVs.

Also, GloboCap seriously overplayed their hand with the miracle "vaccines." Covidian cultists really believed that the "vaccines" would protect them from infection. Epidemiology experts like Rachel Maddow assured them that they would:

"Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person," Maddow said on her show the evening of March 29, 2021. "A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else," she added with a shrug. "It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people."

And now they are all sick with ... well, a cold, basically, or are "asymptomatically infected," or whatever. And they are looking at a future in which they will have to submit to "vaccinations" and "boosters" every three or four months to keep their "compliance certificates" current, in order to be allowed to hold a job, attend a school, or eat at a restaurant, which, OK, hardcore cultists are fine with, but there are millions of people who have been complying, not because they are delusional fanatics who would wrap their children's heads in cellophane if Anthony Fauci ordered them to, but purely out of "solidarity," or convenience, or herd instinct, or ... you know, cowardice.

Many of these people (i.e., the non-fanatics) are starting to suspect that maybe what we "tin-foil-hat-wearing, Covid-denying, anti-vax, conspiracy-theorist extremists" have been telling them for the past 22 months might not be as crazy as they originally thought. They are back-pedaling, rationalizing, revising history, and just making up all kinds of self-serving bullshit, like how we are now in "a post-vaccine world," or how "the Science has changed," or how "Omicron is different," in order to avoid being forced to admit that they're the victims of a GloboCap PSYOP and the worldwide mass hysteria it has generated.

Which ... fine, let them tell themselves whatever they need to for the sake of their vanity, or their reputations as investigative journalists, celebrity leftists, or Twitter revolutionaries. If you think these "recovering" Covidian Cult members are ever going to publicly acknowledge all the damage they have done to society, and to people and their families, since March 2020, much less apologize for all the abuse they heaped onto those of us who have been reporting the facts ... well, they're not. They are going to spin, equivocate, rationalize, and lie through their teeth, whatever it takes to convince themselves and their audience that, when the shit hit the fan, they didn't click heels and go full "Good German."

Give these people hell if you need to. I feel just as angry and betrayed as you do. But let's not lose sight of the ultimate stakes here. Yes, the official narrative is finally crumbling, and the Covidian Cult is starting to implode, but that does not mean that this fight is over. GloboCap and their puppets in government are not going to cancel the whole "New Normal" program, pretend the last two years never happened, and gracefully retreat to their lavish bunkers in New Zealand and their mega-yachts.

Totalitarian movements and death cults do not typically go down gracefully. They usually go down in a gratuitous orgy of wanton, nihilistic violence as the cult or movement desperately attempts to maintain its hold over its wavering members and defend itself from encroaching reality. And that is where we are at the moment ... or where we are going to be very shortly.

Cities, states, and countries around the world are pushing ahead with implementing the New Normal biosecurity society, despite the fact that there is no longer any plausible justification for it. Austria is going ahead with forced "vaccination." Germany is preparing to do the same. France is rolling out a national segregation system to punish "the Unvaccinated." Greece is fining "unvaccinated" pensioners. Australia is operating "quarantine camps." Scotland. Italy. Spain. The Netherlands. New York City. San Francisco. Toronto. The list goes on, and on, and on.

I don't know what is going to happen. I'm not an oracle. I'm just a satirist. But we are getting dangerously close to the point where GloboCap will need to go full-blown fascist if they want to finish what they started. If that happens, things are going to get very ugly. I know, things are already ugly, but I'm talking a whole different kind of ugly. Think Jonestown, or Hitler's final days in the bunker, or the last few months of the Manson Family.

That is what happens to totalitarian movements and death cults once the spell is broken and their official narratives fall apart. When they go down, they try to take the whole world with them. I don't know about you, but I'm hoping we can avoid that. From what I have heard and read, it isn't much fun.

https://www.sott.net/article/463345-The-Last-Days-of-The-Covidian-Cult

I dream of u, Corfu

Pythagoras and Synthesis

Pythagoras is the first experiment in creating a synthesis. Twenty-five centuries have passed since then and nobody else has tried it again. Nobody else before had done it, and nobody else has done it afterwards either. It needs a mind which is both -- scientific and mystic. It is a rare phenomenon. It happens once in a while.

There have been great mystics -- Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra. And there have been great scientists -- Newton, Edison, Einstein. But to find a man who is at home with both worlds, easily at home, is very difficult. Pythagoras is that kind of man -- a class unto himself. He cannot be categorized by anybody else.

The synthesis that he tried was needed, particularly in his days, as it is needed today -- because the world is again at the same point. The world moves in a wheel. The Sanskrit word for "the world" is samsara. Samsara means the wheel. The wheel is big: one circle is completed in twenty-five centuries. Twenty-five centuries before Pythagoras, Atlantis committed suicide -- out of man's own scientific growth. But without wisdom, scientific growth is dangerous. It is putting a sword in the hands of a child.

Now twenty-five centuries have passed since Pythagoras. Again the world is in a chaos. Again the wheel has come to the same point -- it always comes to the same point. It takes twenty-five centuries for this moment to happen. After each twenty-five centuries the world comes into a state of great chaos.

Man becomes uprooted, starts feeling meaningless. All the values of life disappear. A great darkness surrounds. Sense of direction is lost. One simply feels accidental. There seems to be no purpose, no significance. Life seems to be just a by-product of chance. It seems existence does not care for you. It seems there is no life after death. It seems whatsoever you do is futile, routine, mechanical. All seems to be pointless.

These times of chaos, disorder, can either be a great curse, as it happened in Atlantis, or they can prove a quantum leap in human growth. It depends on how we use them. It is only in such great times of chaos that great stars are born.

Pythagoras was not alone. In Greece, Pythagoras and Heraclitus were born. In India, Buddha and Mahavira and many others. In China, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius, Mencius, Lieh Tzu, and many more. In Iran, Zarathustra. In the brahmin tradition, many great upanishadic seers. In the world of Judaism, Moses.... All these people, these great Masters were born at a certain stage in human history -- twenty-five centuries ago.

Now we are again in a great chaos, and man's fate will depend on what we do. Either we will destroy ourselves like the civilization that destroyed itself in Atlantis -- the whole world will become a Hiroshima; we will be drowned in our own knowledge; in our own science we will commit suicide, a collective suicide. A few, a Noah and a few of his followers, may be saved, or may not be.... Or, there is a possibility that we can take a quantum leap.

Either man can commit suicide, or man can be reborn. Both doors are open.

If such times can create people like Heraclitus and Lao Tzu and Zarathustra and Pythagoras and Buddha and Confucius, why can they not create a great humanity? They can. But we go on missing the opportunity.

The ordinary masses live in such unconsciousness that they can't see even a few steps ahead. They are blind. And they are the majority! The coming twenty-five years, the last part of this century, is going to be of immense value. If we can create a great momentum in the world for meditation, for the inward journey, for tranquillity, for stillness, for love, for God... if we can create a space in these coming twenty-five years for God to happen to many many people, humanity will have a new birth, a resurrection. A new man will be born.

And once you miss these times, then for twenty-five centuries again you will remain the same. A few people will achieve enlightenment, but it will remain only for a few people. Here and there, once in a while, a person will become alert and aware and divine. But the greater part of humanity goes on lagging behind -- in darkness, in utter darkness, in absolute misery. The greater part of humanity goes on living in hell.

But these moments when chaos spreads and man loses his roots in the past, becomes unhinged from the past, are great moments. If we can learn something from the past, if we can learn something from Pythagoras.... People could not use Pythagoras and his understanding, they could not use his great synthesis, and they could not use the doors that he had made available. A single individual had done something immense, something impossible, but it was not used.

Pythagoras, Atlantis, and the Greatest Luxury

Osho, Philosophia Perennis, Volume 1, Number 1

Synthesis - West vs East

Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Pythagoras represents the eternal Pilgrim for philosophia perennis -- the perennial philosophy of life. He is a seeker of truth par excellence. He staked all that he had for the search. He traveled far and wide, almost the whole known world of those days, in search of the Masters, of the mystery schools, of any hidden secrets. From Greece he went to Egypt -- in search of the lost Atlantis and its secrets.

In Egypt, the great library of Alexandria was still intact. It had all the secrets of the past preserved. It was the greatest library that has ever existed on the earth; later on it was destroyed by a Mohammedan fanatic. The library was so big that when it was burnt, for six months the fire continued.

Just twenty-five centuries before Pythagoras, a great continent, Atlantis, had disappeared into the ocean. The ocean that is called Atlantic is so called because of that continent, Atlantis.

Atlantis was the ancientmost continent of the earth, and civilization had reached the highest possible peaks. But whenever a civilization reaches a great peak there is a danger: the danger of falling apart, the danger of committing suicide.

Humanity is facing that same danger again. When man becomes powerful, he does not know what to do with that power. When the power is too much and the understanding is too little, power has always proved dangerous. Atlantis was not drowned in the ocean by any natural calamity. It was actually the same thing that is happening today: it was man's own power over nature. It was through atomic energy that Atlantis was drowned -- it was man's own suicide. But all the scriptures and all the secrets of Atlantis were still preserved in Alexandria.

All over the world there are parables, stories, about the great flood.

Those stories have come from the drowning of Atlantis. All those stories -- Christian, Jewish, Hindu -- they all talk about a great flood that had come once in the past and had destroyed almost the whole civilization. Just a few initiates, adepts, had survived. Noah is an adept; a great Master, and Noah's ark is just a symbol.

A few people escaped the calamity. With them, all the secrets that the civilization had attained survived. They were preserved in Alexandria.

Pythagoras lived in Alexandria for years. He studied, he was initiated into the mystery schools of Egypt -- particularly the mysteries of Hermes. Then he came to India, was initiated into all that the brahmins of this ancient land had discovered, all that India had known in the inner world of man.

For years he was in India, then he traveled to Tibet and then to China. That was the whole known world. His whole life he was a seeker, a pilgrim, in search of a philosophy -- philosophy in the true sense of the word: love for wisdom. He was a lover, a philosopher -- not in the modern sense of the word but in the old, ancient sense of the word. Because a lover cannot only speculate, a lover cannot only think about truth: a lover has to search, risk, adventure.

Truth is the beloved. How can you go on only thinking about it? You have to be connected with the beloved through the heart. The search cannot be only intellectual; it has to be deep down intuitive. Maybe the beginning has to be intellectual, but only the beginning. Just the starting point has to be intellectual, but finally it has to reach the very core of your being.

He was one of the most generous of men, most liberal, democratic, unprejudiced, open. He was respected all over the world. From Greece to China he was revered. He was accepted in every mystic school; with great joy he was welcomed everywhere. His name was known in all the lands. Wherever he went he was received with great rejoicing.

Even though he had become enlightened, he still continued to reach into hidden secrets, he still continued to ask to be initiated into new schools. He was trying to create a synthesis; he was trying to know the truth through as many possibilities as is humanly possible. He wanted to know truth in all its aspects, in all its dimensions.

He was always ready to bow down to a Master. He himself was an enlightened man -- it is very rare. Once you have become enlightened, the search stops, the seeking disappears. There is no point.

Buddha became enlightened... then he never went to any other Master. Jesus became enlightened... then he never went to any other Master. Or Lao Tzu, or Zarathustra, or Moses.... Hence Pythagoras is something unique. No parallel has ever existed. Even after becoming enlightened, he was ready to become a disciple to anybody who was there to reveal some aspect of truth.

His search was such that he was ready to learn from anybody. He was an absolute disciple. He was ready to learn from the whole existence. He remained open, and he remained a learner to the very end.

The whole effort was... and it was a great effort in those days, to travel from Greece to China. It was full of dangers. The journey was hazardous; it was not easy as it is today. Today things are so easy that you can take your breakfast in New York and your lunch in London, and you can suffer indigestion in Poona. Things are very simple. In those days it was not so simple. It was really a risk; to move from one country to another country took years.

By the time Pythagoras came back, he was a very old man. But seekers gathered around him; a great school was born. And, as it always happens, the society started persecuting him and his school and his disciples. His whole life he searched for the perennial philosophy, and he had found it! He had gathered all the fragments into a tremendous harmony, into a great unity. But he was not allowed to work it out in detail -- to teach people he was not allowed.

He was persecuted from one place to another. Many attempts were made on his life. It was almost impossible for him to teach all that he had gathered. And his treasure was immense -- in fact, nobody else has ever had such a treasure as he had. But this is how foolish humanity is, and has always been. This man had done something impossible: he had bridged East and West. He was the first bridge. He had come to know the Eastern mind as deeply as the Western mind.

He was a Greek. He was brought up with the Greek logic, with the Greek scientific approach, and then he moved to the East. And then he learnt the ways of intuition. Then he learnt how to be a mystic. He himself was a great mathematician in his own right. And a mathematician becoming a mystic is a revolution, because these are poles apart.

Osho, Philosophia Perennis, Volume 1, Number 1

Apollo

The son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis. Apollo was the god of music (principally the lyre, and he directed the choir of the Muses) and also of prophecy, colonization, medicine, archery (but not for war or hunting), poetry, dance, intellectual inquiry and the carer of herds and flocks. He was also a god of light, known as "Phoebus" (radiant or beaming, and he was sometimes identified with Helios the sun god). He was also the god of plague and was worshiped as Smintheus (from sminthos, rat) and as Parnopius (from parnops, grasshopper) and was known as the destroyer of rats and locust, and according to Homer's Iliad, Apollo shot arrows of plague into the Greek camp. Apollo being the god of religious healing would give those guilty of murder and other immoral deeds a ritual purification. Sacred to Apollo are the swan (one legend says that Apollo flew on the back of a swan to the land of the Hyperboreans, he would spend the winter months among them), the wolf and the dolphin. His attributes are the bow and arrows, on his head a laurel crown, and the cithara (or lyre) and plectrum. But his most famous attribute is the tripod, the symbol of his prophetic powers.

When the goddesss Hera, the wife of Zeus (it was he who had coupled with Leto) found out about Leto's pregnancy, she was outraged with jealousy. Seeking revenge Hera forced Leto to roam the earth in search of a place to give birth. Sicne Hera had forbidden Leto to stay anywhere on earth, either on terra-ferma or an island at sea, the only place to seek shelter was Delos, being in the center of the Aegean, and also difficult to reach, as there were strong under-currents, because it was said to be a floating island. Because it was a floating island, it was not considered either of Hera's prohibitions, and so Leto was able to give birth to the divine twins Apollo and Artemis (before Leto gave birth to Apollo, the island was encircled by a flock of swans, this is why the swan was sacred to him). As a gesture of thanks Delos was secured to the sea-bed by four columns to give it stability, and from then on it became one of the most important sanctuaries to Apollo. (A variation of Apollo's birth was that the jealous Hera had incarcerated Ilithyia, the goddess of childbirth, but the other gods intervened forcing Hera to release Ilithyia, which allowed Leto to give birth ).

Apollo's first achievement was to rid Pytho (Delphi) of the serpent (or dragon) Python. This monstrous beast protected the sanctuary of Pytho from its lair beside the Castalian Spring. There it stood guard while the "Sibyl" gave out her prophecies as she inhaled the trance inducing vapors from an open chasm. Apollo killed Python with his bow and arrows (Homer wrote "he killed the fearsome dragon Python, piercing it with his darts"). Apollo not only took charge of the oracle but rid the neighboring countryside of widespread destruction, as Python had destroyed crops, sacked villages and polluted streams and springs. However, to make amends for killing Python, as the fearsome beast was the son of Gaia, Apollo had to serve king Admetus for nine years (in some versions eight) as a cowherd. This he did, and when he returned to Pytho he came in the guise of a dolphin bringing with him priests from Crete (Apollo's cult title "Delphinios" meaning dolphin or porpoise, is probably how Delphi was so named). After killing Python and taking possession of the oracle, the god of light (Phobus) became known as "Pythian Apollo". He dedicated a bronze tripod to the sanctuary and bestowed divine powers on one of the priestesses, and she became known as the "Pythia". It was she who inhaled the hallucinating vapors from the fissure in the temple floor, while she sat on a tripod chewing laurel leaves. After she mumbled her answer, a male priest would translate it for the supplicant. Delphi became the most important oracle center of Apollo, there were several including Clarus and Branchidae.

Apollo, as with Zeus his father, had many love affairs with goddesses and mortals. Apollo's infatuation for the nymph Daphne, which had been invoked by the young god of love Eros, because Apollo had mocked him, saying his archery skills were pathetic, and Apollo's singing had also irritated him. Daphne was the beautiful daughter of the river god Ladon, and she was constantly pursued by Apollo. To escape from Apollo's insistent behavior, she fled to the mountains, but the persistent Apollo followed her. Annoyed by this, she asked the river god Peneus for help, which he did. As soon as Apollo approached Daphne, he tried to embrace her, but when he stretched out his arms she transformed into a laurel tree. Apollo, distraught by what had happened, made the laurel his sacred tree. Apollo also loved Cyrene, she was another nymph, and she bore Apollo a son: Aristaeus, a demi-god, who became a protector of cattle and fruit trees, and a deity of hunting, husbandry and bee-keeping. He taught men dairy skills and the use of nets and traps in hunting.

The most famous mortal loves of Apollo was Hecuba, she was the wife of Priam, the king of Troy. She bore him Troilius. Foretold by an oracle, as long as Troilius reached the age of twenty, Troy could not be defeated. But the hero Achilles ambushed and killed him, when the young prince and his sister Polyxena secretly visited a spring. Apollo also fell in love with Cassandra, the sister of Troilius, and daughter of Hecuba and Priam. He seduced Cassandra on the promise that he would teach her the art of prophecy, but having learnt the prophetic art she rejected him. Apollo, being angry of her rejection punished her, by declaring her prophecies never to be accepted or believed.

Asclepius, the god of healing, was also Apollo's offspring, after his union with Coronis, who was daughter of Phlegyas, king of the Lapiths. While she was pregnant by Apollo, Coronis fell in love with Ischys, son of Elatus, but a crow informed Apollo of the affair. Apollo sent his twin sister Artemis to kill Coronis, and Artemis carried out he brothers wishes. While her body was burning on the funeral pyre, Apollo removed the unborn child, and took him to Chiron, who raised the child Asclepius.

Apollo also, as did his father Zeus, fall in love with one of his own gender, Hyacinthus, a Spartan prince. He was very handsome and athletic, which inflamed the passions of Apollo. One day while Apollo and Hyacinthus were practicing throwing the discus, Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, who was also attracted to the young prince, and jealous of Apollo's amorous affection towards the boy, made the discus veer off course by blowing an ill wind. The discus, which Apollo had thrown, hit Hyacinthus, smashing his skull. Apollo rushed to him, but he was dead. The god was overcome with grief, but to immortalize the love he had for the beautiful youth, he had a flower grow were his blood had stained the earth. Apollo also loved the young boy Cyparissus, a descendant of Heracles. The impassioned Apollo gave Cyparissus a sacred deer, as a love token. The young deer became tame, and was the constant companion of the boy, until a tragic accident occurred. As the young deer lay sleeping in the shade of the undergrowth, Cyparissus threw his javelin, which by chance hit, and killed the deer. Grief-stricken by what had happened, Cyparissus wanted to die. He asked Apollo to let his tears fall for all eternity. With apprehension Apollo transformed the boy into a tree, the cypress, which became the symbol of sorrow, as the sap on its trunk forms droplets, like tears.

Apollo could also be ruthless when he was angered. The mortal Niobe, boasted to Apollo's mother Leto, that she had fourteen children (in some versions six or seven), which must make her more superior than Leto, who had only bore two. Apollo greatly angered by this slew her sons, and Artemis killed Niobe's daughters. Niobe wept so much that she turned into a pillar of stone. Apollo was infuriated when the satyr Marsyas challenged Apollo to music contest. After winning the competition, Apollo had Marsyas flayed alive, for being so presumptuous, as to challenge a god.

Apollo was worshiped throughout the Greek world, at Delphi every four years they held the Pythian Games in his honor. He had many epithets, including "Pythian Apollo" (his name at Delphi), "Apollo Apotropaeus" (Apollo who averts evil), and "Apollo Nymphegetes" (Apollo who looks after the Nymphs). As the god of shepherds he also had the cult titles "Lukeios" (from lykos; wolf), protecting the flocks from wolfs, and "Nomius" (of pastures, belonging to shepherds). Being the god of colonists, Apollo influenced his priests at Delphi to give divine guidance, as to where the expedition should proceed. This was during the height of the colonizing era circa 750-550 BCE. Apollo's title was "Archigetes" (leader of colonists). According to one legend, it was Apollo who helped either Cretan or Arcadian colonists found the city of Troy.

In art Apollo is at most times depicted as a handsome young man, clean shaven and carrying either a lyre, or his bow and arrows. There are many sculptures of Apollo and one of the most famous is the central figure from the west pediment of the Temple of Zeus, at Olympia, showing Apollo declaring victory in favor of the Lapiths in their struggle against the Centaurs.

A song sung in honor of Apollo is called a paean.

Source: Pantheon

The love which softens hearts

...In the beginning, Hesiod says, there was Chaos, vast and dark. Then appeared Gaea, the deep-breasted earth, and finally Eros, ' the love which softens hearts ', whose fructifying influence would thenceforth preside over the formation of beings and things. From Chaos were born Erebus and Night who, uniting, gave birth in their turn to Ether and Hemera, the day. On her part Gaea first bore Uranus, the sky crowned with stars, ' whom she made her equal in grandeur, so that he entirely covered her '. Then she created the high mountains and Pontus, ' the sterile sea ' with its harmonious waves... ancientgreece.com