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[badstar]

The Orphic description of Apollo...it is quite interesting to me. So different from the commonly-thought-of distant, aloof, restrained and removed picture of him....

Come, O blessed Paian, O slayer of Tityos, O Phoibos, O Lykoreus.
A giver of riches are you and an illustrious dweller in Memphis,
O god to whom one cries "ie".
To you, O Titan and Pythian god belong the lyre and seeds and plows.
Grynean, Sminthian, slayer of Pytho, Delphic diviner,
You are a wild, light-bringing and lovable god, O glorious youth.
You shoot your arrows from afar, you lead the Muses into dance,
And, O holy one, you are Bacchos, Didymeus, and Loxias too.
Lord of Delos, eye that sees all and brings light to mortals,
Golden is your hair and clear your oraculr utterances.
Hear me with kindly heart as I pray for people.
You gaze upon all the etheral vastness,
And upon the rich earth you look throught the twilight.
In the quiet darkness of night lit with stars you see earth's roots below,
And you hold the bounds of the whole world.
Yours, too are the beginning and the end to come.
You make everything bloom, and with your versatile lyre you harmonize the poles,
Now reaching the highest pitch, now the lowest and now again with the Doric mode,
Balancing the poles harmoniously, as you keep the living races distinct.
You have infused harmony into all men's lot,
Giving them equal measure of summer and winter.
The lowest notes you strike in the winter, the highest in summer,
And your mode is Doric for spring's lovely and blooming season.
Wherefore mortals call you lord, and Pan, the two-horned god,
Who sends the whistling winds.
For this too, you have the master seal of the entire cosmos.
O, blessed one, hear the supplicant voice of the initiates and save them.

Comments

[fuego.livejournal.com]

but I don't "know" him.

Lucky for you :-P

Actually, some of the things you write about in your LJ make me wonder if he's not monkeying around behind-the-scenes in the Delphic "know thyself" way.

I always love to hear you talk about him.

Thank you. I'm always happy to babble on a bit about him :-) (I posted him as the god of the week over at Mystic Wicks the other night, so there's a bit more on this vein there- actually, I was posting about this hymn over there when I came over and posted it here.)

[luciaofthegrove.livejournal.com]

I love the orphic hymn to Apollon! It is meshes quite well with my experience of him. I have never been able to view him as aloof, cold, distant or removed. He always been a very vital warm presence in my life. This hymn truly is very descriptive of the wonderful qualities of Apollon.