Chapter One: Apollo: The God of Wisdom
Profile Apollo is the Mr. Right of the Greek pantheon. A son of almighty Zeus, the king of the gods, and one of Zeus's many mistresses -- the lovely Leto -- Apollo is generally described as tall, dark, and handsome. A Homeric hymn to Apollo tells us that when the young god with his long, curling black hair first appeared on Mount Olympus and drew his bow, all the gods and goddesses rose from their seats in astonishment.
Gazing at a marble frieze of the gods and goddesses making up the pantheon, Nietzsche, the German philosopher and classicist, wrote of Apollo's special star quality: "We must not be misled by the fact that Apollo stands side by side with the others as an individual deity, without any claim to priority of rank. For the same impulse that embodies itself in Apollo gave birth to this entire Olympian world, and in this sense Apollo is its father."
Apollo was a player. His love life was protean, but his success with women wasn't as stellar as might be expected. Daphne had herself transformed into a laurel tree to escape his advances. Afterward, Apollo would wear a branch of laurel as a wreath on his head -- hence, as he was also the god of poetry, the phrase "poet laureate." When Cassandra remained unimpressed by his attributes, he cursed her with the gift of prophecy, which included a caveat that no one would ever believe her accurate warnings about the future.
He had more luck with handsome young men, whose love for him was at least reciprocal. Yet these romances ended tragically as well. Apollo's great infatuation was Hyacinthus, a divine boy who rode swans instead of horses. Apollo would carry the nets when Hyacinthus went fishing, lead the dogs when he went hunting, and accompany him on hiking trips into the mountains, while neglecting his own practice of the lyre and archery. One day when Hyacinthus and Apollo were throwing the discus, the wind was shifted by the jealous west wind, Zephyrus, who was also in love with the boy. The discus sliced Hyacinthus through the skull. From the drops of his purple blood grew the hyacinth flower.
Apollo's next infatuation, Cyparissus, accidentally speared his own pet stag, a flashy sports car of a creature with gilded antlers and festooned with silver ornaments. Cyparissus was so inconsolable when he discovered his misfire that Apollo turned him into a sorrowing tree, the cypress, an evergreen often planted in cemeteries. For these passionate affairs, Apollo is distinguished as the first god to woo someone of the same sex. He might well be nominated on that basis for the vacant post of god of homosexuality. (In Greek legend, the first mortal to pursue another man was the poet Thamyris, who was also in love with Hyacinthus.)
But Nietzsche didn't single out Apollo as the trophy god because he scored sporadically with young beauties of either sex. As with mortals, a disconnect can exist between a god's love life and his work life. Apollo could be dizzy when he was in pursuit of a long redial list of potential lovers. But when he was at the office, he was all business. His focus was sustained and steady. During the workday, Apollo was the sun, and so his job was the spreading of light. His arc was perfection itself. No quality was finally more crucial for energizing Olympian spirituality than light. As the god of the sun, he was, by extension, the god of all things positive, life-giving, and full of clarity. His light was spiritual as well as solar.
Apollo exhausted many fields in his endeavors as a deity. Exhibiting symptoms resembling attention deficit disorder, he was the god of prophecy, healing and medicine, poetry, music, philosophy, astronomy, archery, youth, wisdom, beauty, intelligence, and moderation. The transformation of so many of his lovers into trees and flowers reveals his closeness with nature. But shooting through all these manifestations is the principle of light. "Light" is the root word in "enlightenment." Hidden in "enlightenment" is the sense of lightening up. His style of music and poetry is likewise illuminating. His mode was never heavy metal. He was much more classical.
The most famous of all the ancient temples was Apollo's temple at Delphi, believed by the Greeks to be the center of the world, its exact site marked with a large conical stone, the omphalos, or navel. The two guiding principles engraved on the temple in the sixth century B.C. were KNOW THYSELF and ALL THINGS IN MODERATION. (Both commands were later accepted by the Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as the basis of morality.) The light of wisdom that produces intuition and healing balance is the shining logo of the Olympian brand. The Athenian Greeks roved freely through all experience in their integration of life with wisdom. They didn't leave any dark closets in their psyches unexposed. But even at their most garish and violent, they maintained a glow of sanity about them. This glow was the halo of the Apollonian principle of wisdom.
Meditations and Exercises
Street Wisdom Apollo's wisdom can sound like the most abstract of principles, the most far-off and Olympian. The Greek word for wisdom, sophia, possesses some lofty connotations. The early Greek-speaking Christians even identified the word with Jesus Christ, as the wisdom of God. (Hence Hagia Sophia, or Holy Wisdom, was the soaring Byzantine church in Istanbul.)
But sophia in ancient Greek had more practical definitions, too. The word could denote skill, craft, cleverness, know-how, cunning, smartness, even expedience. These meanings are closer to our own sense of "streetwise."
The best way to extract wisdom with a capital W from our street experiences is to practice formulating what we've learned -- to exercise wisdom. The most productive place to start is with our relationships past and present. We grow wise from our relationships. Nothing speeds up the process of wisdom more than passion -- whether sexual, romantic, or deriving from a deep friendship. Wisdom isn't a purely intellectual quality. The Greek goddess Psyche -- her name means "Soul" -- was in love, after all, with Eros, the god of romantic love. The soul needs juice from which to distill wisdom.
APOLLONIAN EXERCISE #1
List significant relationships that you've had in your life: trysts, friends, lovers, or partners. Try for five. Then write down lessons you have learned about yourself and life from these relationships.
Each of us has his own quotient of wisdom gained from a personal supply of experiences. I'm going to share my findings. Hopefully, these results will resonate with yours, but you will certainly have conclusions that are entirely your own. Depending on how our particular hand of cards is dealt, we arrive at different insights in different orders and at different times.
My list:
Sally Howard
Dirk
The Boyfriend Within
The two Larrys
Sally and I began our romance in college. I was already experimenting with guys. But the comfort of bubble baths and nights shared with her under a patchwork quilt made for an invaluable home base. Yet Dionysus, the god of sexual energy, soon demanded his due.
Lesson: I was gay.
Howard was a lucky stumble into love. This eleven-year relationship had many of the traits I've since come to think of as wise for the long term, but didn't even know I was looking for at the time.
Lesson: Shared interests, parity of mind and body, and brotherly love all contribute to long-lasting relationships.
Dirk, with his long black hair and heavy Southern accent, resembled Apollo. (Although he didn't sound like A