Apollo

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Apollo of the Belvedere, c. 140 - 130 BC, Vatican Museums; Roman copy after a Greek bronze original attributed to Leochares (c. 330 - 320 BC)
Apollo with cithara (fresco, House of Augustus, today in the Palatine Antiquarium in Rome, ca. 20 BC)

Apollo (Latin; Greek: Ἀπόλλων Apollon) was one of the twelve Olympian gods of Greek and Roman mythology. He was considered the god of light, moral purity, healing and divination, as well as the patron of the arts and many oracle sites. In particular, the Oracle of Delphi, the most important oracle site of antiquity, was dedicated to him. As Phoibos (Greek: Φοῖβος; Latin: Phoebus "the shining one") he was equated with the sun god Helios, while his twin sister Artemis was equated with the moon goddess Semele or the Egyptian Isis. The origin of his name is uncertain. The Pythagoreans and Platonists, who particularly revered Apollo, interpreted his name as A-pollon (the "not-many" or meaning "the one", from ἀ- a- "not" and πολλόν pollón "much, very") and thus pointed to the highest, the absolute. This is also said to have been the subject of Plato's unwritten teaching.

Mythology

According to Greek mythology, Zeus fathered Apollo and his twin sister Artemis with his lover Leto, the daughter of the Titans Koios and Phoibe[1]. Hera, Zeus' jealous wife, wanted to prevent the birth of the two children because the earth mother Gaia had prophesied to her that they would be greater and more powerful than her own children. So she sent the serpentine dragon Python[2] to devour Leto, but Zeus prevented this. Hera then took an oath from Gaia that she would not allow the pregnant Leto a place on earth to give birth to her children.

Then Poseidon caused the floating island of Delos to rise from the sea.[3] Leto was taken there by Hermes on Zeus' orders. Hera now put so much pressure on her daughter Eileithyia, the goddess of birth, that she did not dare to stand by Leto. The other gods, however, were on Leto's side and bought the moon from heaven (Uranos) and gave it to Hephaestus to forge the most beautiful necklace. With this they bribed Eileithyia and Leto was finally able to give birth to her twins. Under a palm tree she gave birth first to Artemis and then, with her help, to Apollo. Meanwhile, the Curetes, who had already protected the newborn Zeus from his father Kronos, were making noise all around with their weapons so that Hera could not hear Leto's cries during labour.[4]

The first act of Apollo, just four days old, was to kill Python. Badly hit by Apollo's arrow, Python fled to the oracle site of the Mother Earth in Delphi, which was originally called Phytho, but from the 5th century BC had been named after Python's wife or female manifestation Delphyne, a daughter of Gaia. Apollo followed Python into the sanctuary and killed him next to the sacred rift. Python's clairvoyant and divination powers thus passed to Apollo, which is why he was also called Apollo Pythios and why the Pythian Games were celebrated in his honour. Nevertheless, the killing of Python was a sacrilege for which Apollo had to go to Tarrha on Crete and undergo ritual purification.

Apollo was also the patron of the arts and the muses were among his followers. He masterfully played the kithara and was victorious in the musical contest with Pan.[5]

With the onset of winter, Apollo flew back on his chariot drawn by swans to the "land beyond the north wind", the land of the Hyperboreans.

Spiritual background

Apollo and the Nathanian Jesus

→ See also: Nathanian Jesus

According to Rudolf Steiner, the killing of Python reflects the third preliminary stage to the Mystery of Golgotha. Towards the end of the Atlantean period, the Christ for the salvation of humanity penetrated for the third time that angel-like being who was later to be born on earth for the first time at the turn of time as the Nathanian Jesus boy. Through this third Christ sacrifice, the soul forces of thinking, feeling and willing, which had become confused through the common Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence, were harmonised, which is also expressed in the playing of the strings on the lyre of Apollo. In truth, the Greeks represented in Apollo the later Nathanian Jesus who was imbued with the Christ.

„But a third calamity was still in store for man, a calamity which related to his astral body, to the distribution of thinking, feeling and willing. Today, man's thinking, feeling and willing are in a certain harmony, and if this is destroyed, then man's health is destroyed. If thinking, feeling and willing do not work together to the right extent, then the human being either gets into excessive hypochondria or into states of madness. People in complete disorder of thought, feeling and will could have reached a state of madness if the third Christ event had not taken place towards the end of the Atlantean period. This had the effect - it is again an interpenetration of the Nathanian Jesus, who is still in the supersensible worlds, with the Christ - of bringing moderate harmony into the soul forces of man, into thinking, feeling and willing [...]

This is the pictorial representation of the third Christ-event: the Archangel Michael or Saint George, the later Nathanian Jesus boy, imbued with the Christ-being. Hence there is the archangel-like figure in the spiritual worlds. And the overcoming of the dragon means the suppression of that in human thinking, feeling and willing - that is, in the passion nature of man - which would throw thinking, feeling and willing into confusion, would bring them into disorder. One can deeply feel how in such powerful images, which are erected, as it were, so that what cannot be grasped or understood with the intellect can at least be placed before the human soul for symbolic viewing and for feeling, how deep, profound connections are expressed in them [...]

The Greeks depicted the Christ, the later Nathanian Jesus boy, as their Apollo. And in a deeply significant way, one might say, Saint George is placed in the cosmos itself with the dragon in Greece. The Greeks had the Castalian spring at Parnassus, where a chasm opened out of the earth, from which vapours rose. These vapours surrounded the mountain like serpents, so that in these serpentine vapours surrounding the mountain one had an image of the wildly storming human passions, which bring thinking, feeling and willing into disorder. Above the maw of the earth, at the place where these serpentine vapours came out, in which the Python lived, they erected the oracle site which was dedicated to Pythia. Pythia sat on her tripod above this maw and was brought into a visionary state by the rising vapours, and what she spoke in this state was taken as the utterance of Apollo himself. And those who wanted advice sent to Pythia and had Apollo give them advice through the mouth of Pythia. The Greeks were therefore of the opinion that Apollo led back to a real being. Now we know this being. It is the later Nathanian Jesus boy, who was inspired by the Christ and was called Apollo by the Greeks. He takes from that which rises out of the earth in the soul of Pythia its luciferic-ahrimanic effect. And because the sacrifice of Apollo rises in the vapours, they are no longer confusing, but wisely ordering thinking, feeling and willing for the Greeks. Thus we see how in the Apollo idea of the Greeks lives that into the thinking, feeling and willing of men has entered the God whom we later call the Christ, the God who at that time sacrificed Himself by entering into the soul of the later Nathanian Jesus boy and pouring harmony into that into which the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman - in thinking, feeling and willing - had to have a confusing effect in the soul of man.“ (Lit.:GA 148, p. 194ff)

„To the west of Mount Parnassus, a chasm of earth opened; the Greeks built a temple over it. Why? Before that, vapours came up from the abyss, which, when the air currents were right, actually wound around the mountains like serpent's coils, like a dragon. And the Greeks imagined Apollo shooting his arrows at the dragon, which came up out of the earth's maw as fierce vapours. Saint George, sending his arrows against the dragon, meets us in the Greek Apollo, in earthly shadow. And when he had overcome him, the dragon Python, a temple is erected, and instead of Python we see how the vapours enter the soul of Pythia and how the Greeks imagine that Apollo now lives inside these wild dragon vapours, who prophesies to them through the oracles from the mouth of Pythia. And the Greeks, this self-confident people, ascend the steps on which they have prepared themselves mentally, and receive what Apollo has to say through Pythia, who is interspersed with the dragon's vapours. That is, Apollo lives in the dragon's blood and imbues the people with wisdom, which they get at the Castalian spring. And a gathering place for the most sacred games and festivals the place becomes.

And why is Apollo able to do that? What is Apollo? He only performs what he lets rise as wisdom from the dragon's blood from spring to autumn. Towards autumn he wanders to his ancient homeland, to the north, to the Hyperborean land. Festivals are celebrated like farewell festivals, because Apollo is moving away. In spring he is received again when he comes from the north. Deep wisdom prevails in this going north of Apollo. The sun, the physical sun, moves south; in the spiritual it is always the opposite. This indicates that Apollo has to do with the sun. Apollo is the angel-like being of whom we have spoken: a shadow, a projection into the Greek mind of the angel-like being who actually worked at the end of the Atlantean time, who was imbued with the Christ. The projection, the shadowing into the Greek mind of the Angel who was inspired by the Christ is Apollo, who speaks wisdom to the Greeks through the mouth of Pythia. And what was contained in this Apollo wisdom for the Greeks! In a manner of speaking, everything that determined them to take this or that measure in the most important matters. Again and again they went to Apollo in difficult matters of life, well prepared in soul, and had their prophecies told by the mouth of Pythia, who was stimulated by the vapours in which Apollo lived. And Asclepius, the healer, is the son of Apollo for the Greeks. The god of healing is Apollo: "healer". The attenuation of that Angel in whom the Christ once was is a healer on earth, or a healer for the earth. For Apollo was never a physically embodied figure, but worked through the earth elements.“ (Lit.:GA 149, p. 57f)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

  1. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 404-406
  2. ↑ Hyginus, Fabulae 53 and 140
  3. ↑ Later, Delos was fixed to the seabed by Poseidon, or according to other stories by Zeus, with four diamond pillars.
  4. ↑ Homeric Hymn to Apollo 14-119; Kallimachos, Hymn to Delos 36-274
  5. ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 11, 150-193
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