Apollo as the rising sun, by François Boucher

Apollon does not whisper.
He doesn’t linger in the background or wait for you to feel “ready.”
He arrives like a scalpel to the soul.
Precise
Unrelenting
Divine.

And when He calls, He does not coddle.
He demands.
Not out of cruelty, but out of clarity.
Because He sees you.
Unfiltered.
He sees your distractions
Your potential
Your excuses
Your greatness
All laid bare.

He does not call the most talented.
He calls the ones willing to burn for what is true.

But make no mistake
Apollon is not your reflection.

This path is not about feeding your ego
Performing aesthetic piety
Or worshiping the idealized version of yourself you project into the world.

You are not here to deify your ambition or your image.

You are here to be humbled.
To be refined.
To place your will
Your effort
Your intellect
Your soul under the gaze of a God who is not impressed by how shiny you look when you’re lying.

Worship is not self-adoration.
Worship is surrendering the illusion of control.
It is letting yourself be corrected.
It is choosing to walk through the fire
Knowing full well it will cost you comfort.

And Apollon?
He will strip you of what is false.
He will demand you separate clarity from delusion
Discipline from obsession
Devotion from self-glorification.

Because He is not your ego’s mirror.
He is your soul’s architect.
He does not want the version of you that’s curated for approval.
He wants the version that keeps rising
Keeps refining
Keeps choosing truth
Even when it hurts.

So if He’s called you, and you’ve felt that heat in your chest, that refusal to be average, that ache to
Understand
Create
Serve
Become

That’s not your pride.

That’s His voice
Echoing through the hollow places where potential has not yet been claimed.

To answer Him is to say yes to that fire.

To walk through your shame
Your fear
Your mistakes
Your mediocrity
and burn them down to something worthy.

This is not a performance.
This is a purification.
This is the work.

So for those who walk the fire
Who feel the smoke curling at their feet

You are not wrong.
You are not too much.
You are not imagining the weight of His hand.

You are being called to become what you were always meant to be.
And there is no room in that calling for ego.
Only for Will
Devotion
And the audacity to be remade in the image of something Holy.

Too many posts in these spiritual spaces (especially on here) are rooted in ego.

People using the Gods as battering rams in arguments with Christians,
or posting devotionals as a performance
to look enlightened, powerful, or aesthetic.

But real devotion isn’t for show.
It’s for surrender.
It’s for transformation.

If you’re following me already, I suspect this isn’t you.
You wouldn’t still be here if it was.

You’re here because something deeper is stirring.
Because you’ve felt it too.

When Apollon came into my life, it wasn’t gentle.
It was cutting.
He didn’t ask me to perform.
He asked me to become.
To surrender the image I’d built of who I thought I should be.
and to let Him carve out the person I was meant to be.

That process?
It is holy.
But it is not glamorous.
It is sacrifice.
It is self-honesty.

It is standing before a God who sees everything and choosing to be seen anyway.

My life has changed completely since devoting myself to Him.
And I didn’t write this for attention.
I wrote it because I needed to say it out loud.

For the version of me who nearly gave up.
For the ones walking through the fire right now with me.
For anyone who has felt Apollon’s call and wasn’t sure what it meant.

I shared this because I know I’m not alone.
Because I know the quiet ache to rise.
The fire that refuses to go out.
That voice that keeps calling you to something more.

If that speaks to you
if you feel Him moving something deep within
follow me here if you're not already @theapollonian2.

We’ll walk this path of devotion together.
Not to impress, but to transform.
Not to perform, but to become.

Apollo & Daphne, plate from the Service Olympique
By Marie-Victoire Jaquotot.

Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them, you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.

Epictetus

Apollo, Lord of Light,
I greet you at the edge of something new.

Today the winds shift,
Mercury returns to Gemini,
and I feel thought and word stirring like birds before flight.
The Moon burns through Aries skies,
calling me to act, to speak, to rise.

I ask you, son of Leto,
walk beside me as I open my mouth and my mind.
Let my words be clear and rooted in truth.
Let my thoughts be sharp,
not to wound, but to understand.

You, who guide the hands of healers
and steady the minds of seekers,
remind me that wisdom is not only in knowing,
but in listening,
to others, to the world, and to myself.

The new moon waits in the wings.
Its silence asks what I will plant in the darkness.
Let it be courage.
Let it be clarity.
Let it be the promise to begin again
even if I don’t have all the answers.

Apollo,
burn away the fog that keeps me from my purpose.
Shine through my fear of failure.
Fill me with that golden certainty
that truth, when spoken with care,
can change everything.

For every beginning I hesitate to take,
be my fire.
For every word I hold back,
be my breath.
And in all things,
be my light.

Apollo, god of literature, plays his harp; a town goes about its rituals.
Engraving by J. Sadeler after J. van der Straet, 1594.

Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people's weaknesses. Avoid being one of the mob who indulges in such pastimes. Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. It is the easiest thing in the world to slide imperceptibly into vulgarity. But there's no need for that to happen if you determine not to waste your time and attention on mindless pap.

Epictetus

Apollo of Mantua
Marble Roman copy after a 5th-century BCE Greek original attributed to Polykleitos

Hail Apollon, lord of the winding road, I give adoration unto you.

Pallas Athene Visiting Apollo on the Parnassus
By: Arnold Houbraken