Apollo & creative devotion

Channeling passion with containment & discipline

This is a letter to a mentorship client who had been working to resolve shadows around power, lust, domination, eros, and perfectionism in his personal and creative life. Very early on in our engagement, the mythic dynamic between Apollo and Daphne arose in relation to his images. This note came as a response to a breakthrough in my client accepting his creative desire and relating to it with a new sense of play, humility, surrender, and openness.

Our creative images — those we encounter in dreams, imagination, and creative vision — hold mythic dimension. Myths offer us profound insight into our inner dynamics — those creative forces at play within us. A mythic lens can show us where our hidden tension lies and what needs to come into balance in order for us to express more freely and authentically.

Each mentorship is unique to the client and the images they encounter.

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Dear B,

Writing to you from home on our little island where I have been catching my breath after several weeks of groundlessness.

I told you in one of our first sessions together from the island that this is Apollo's island. He stands in monument, glittering in the sun with spiraling bronze rays to greet all who arrive at our port.

Lucia, my little one, calls him by his full name every time: Apollo the Sun God. Anytime she sees a sun image that seems to be alive or has a human face, she cries out: Mama, look, it's Apollo the Sun God! There's a kind of reverence about it that really gets me.

She gets him.

Like you, it's taking me some time to understand Apollo. But any creative endeavor (or creative life) demands we get into right relationship with him. Like you, too, I've better related to Dionysian energy in my creativity. But as we know, leaning all the way toward Dionysian tendencies (or any one-sidedness) can cause an imbalance.

I already shared with you that I made a pilgrimage to Apollo's ancient temple at Delphi earlier this spring. The myth goes that after Apollo slayed the Python who guarded the sacred site there, he wanted to develop a sanctuary and oracle in his name. He needed priests to build his temple, and maintain it, and priestesses to interpret the oracle. So, he transformed himself into a dolphin and went out to sea. He found a ship of Cretan sailors and led them across the sea to Delphi. When they arrived, he revealed himself in his divine form and told them they would serve as priests at his new sanctuary. He blessed them with divine wisdom and as bridges between the human and divine and made them the first interpreters of the Pythian Oracle.

Delphi became a center for his worship and people would sail in from around the world to make offerings to the god and receive his wisdom & direction in their endeavors.

When I made that trip to Delphi, I didn't really understand why, nor did I know such an iconic monument to Apollo stood on this shore I would come to call home. But it's been made clear to me that Apollo has a tremendous amount of support to offer my endeavors if I can resolve my own shadow aspects of him.

Quite simply, Apollo offers discipline and structure to creativity. He asks that we honor boundaries (and vows) which invites safety and containment for our creative projects (and relationships) to flourish. While he is not Hermes, he does stand to connect the human with the divine through creativity and the arts, and his celebration of beauty and mastery. In his mythic transformation to dolphin with the Cretan sailors, we get a sense for the way he can serve as a guide in deep waters by offering divine wisdom and prophecy. This dolphin link also reveals Apollo's lighter aspects as a creature of play and intelligence.

I want to come back to the idea of mastery because it links to a shadow aspect we've been working with, especially in the relationship with Daphne. Apollo wants to possess her (a demolition or destruction). Resisting possession, the feminine instead is planted. She reveals herself as something eternal (an ideal image, as in the laurel) but perpetually changing, the way a living thing must be. In this way, she is allowed to be true to herself.

Recognizing that he can never possess the "object" of his desire (or creativity), Apollo must learn a new way of relating. He can give her a name but he cannot own it. She does not belong to him.

I want to continue linking Daphne to a feminine, creative, and relational aspect of the Self. She links to the Kundalini — that eternal evolution of matter — the Sa Ta Na Ma cycle of death and rebirth. She is nature; she cannot die. She takes new form in us, again and again.

As creative practitioners & creative beings our job is to recognize this living feminine creative energy — not owning it but humbling ourselves to it so that she becomes our inner authority. Apollo is forever changed in this encounter with Daphne. His being, his purpose, from this point forward, is to serve her and uplift her image. He does so with his lyre, his song. He does so with a crown made of Her (she, who he worships) which he offers as a crown of achievement to all who express the divine in their work (he crowns them with her beauty and the ideal she represents).

Developing the light aspects of our Apollonion qualities looks like channelling our creative energy into form with consistency and focus (tangible action). It is developing a healthy relationship with our self-mastery (grounding our passion with boundary so we are not consumed by it). Tempering raw power with emotional insight. Creating from a place of inner truth as we heal our need for validation. Prioritizing being true (being as authentic & vulnerable as possible) over our perfectionism. Getting over our need to compare (focusing on the expression of our own creative gifts instead of repressing our envy). Recognizing that our creative gifts offer something of value to the collective (beauty, or perhaps it’s more precise to say one’s truth, is meant to be shared, not singly possessed).

More to explore here, but I'll save it for tomorrow's session. For now, I celebrate what this revelation has offered you:

Letting go of the mask of dominance to encounter my facility and joy at emotional depth and intensity. Dropping the spells: it feels like liberation, Alma. Visceral and immediate, and I hardly know it. There are leagues of depth beckoning.

With care,

A

Apollo & Daphne by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1622-25