Apollo the Purifier

Dark as the night you come with your light
Shining upon the world, in your hand the bow
In your eyes so pure the truth of ages to come
From your mouth song flows like a stream
From you skin a perfume of a thousand flowers
And in your hands a golden sword dances.

Lord of the darkness within and without
Great power, with your being of shining light
Disperse the mists of doom and evil.

As you come from the land of the warm sun
All untruth and impure trembles before you
And the whole world shines with you radiance.
With your sword of golden waters and fire,
With your bow which strikes from afar
You fight the serpent of chaos and undoing.
With your eyes which gaze across the time,
With your hands of perfect works
You honour the serpent of origins and mind.

For only you other than Zeus are called Moiragetes,
Only you can read the mind of even the Great King,
Only you can see beyond the being and the mists
And tell the truth from lies. Teach us with your balance.

We who are impure stand before your might
And wonder fills our hearts and our eyes sparkle.
And with your soft hands you touch our forehead
And your light enters our being:
All that was me becomes yours,
All I thought I controlled slips through my hands
In the rape of your golden touch.
But as the sudden bright fills our soul
We become one with ourselves,
We are aware of the divine Ananke
Which permeates our existence.

Divine Apollo Purifier,
I ask you bless your followers
And dispel all evil and darkness
Which is too much from us.
Hail, Great Phoibos!

A God of Contradictions

Apollon is God of:

• Light and Darkness
• Healing and Plagues
• Saviour and Death-bringer
• Boy protector and boy slayer
• Colonization/Exploring and Home/Doorway
• Purification and Murder
• Who Shoots/Works from afar and One who helps and is often seen in battle
• Truth and Poetry (which is many times a lie)
• Who shines like the sun and comes like the night
• Of youth and the transition to adulthood
• Of the pastures and of the city
• Of Music an Holy Silence

Does this has any correlation with "Nothing to Excess"? Just a small thought.

Apollo, Death-bringer and Growth into Manhood

Just some random thought I had in the bus today:

Apollo is often named "Death-bringer", "of deadly arrows" and is seen as an active God on war. This of course correlates with the slaying of the Python, plague-bringing, and the likes; but it is also in a very war-like (or Ares-like, Athena-like) kind of death bringing.

I just realized how well this connects with another facet of him: the transition between adolescence and manhood - Apollo is the God of this initiation, just like His sister is for girls. This passage marked the entrance of a boy into the world of men which, coincidentally, is the world of war, which means that one facet of growing into manhood is war and therefore he would be death-bringer in this way as well.

Like I said, just some random thought which needs a lot to be developed upon.