It’s a two-hour drive to the hotel, and my boyfriend leans back against the driver’s seat easily. He’s handsome in the morning light, long hair curling down to his shoulders in waves of grey and brown and pink. “Which Greek god are you most like?” he asks. “And which one do people mistake you for?”
I hum, thoughtfully, looking out at the salt marshes as they turn into dunes, and then into woods as we drive. It’s a new landscape, for me, as strange as the first time I saw a mountain. “Olympians only?”
He laughs. “Which ones are Olympians?” he asks, and we spend a few minutes naming them as I count off on my fingers, deciding to count Hestia in the game. “Sure,” he says. “So answer my question.”
I turn the question over in my head, frowning. “I don’t know,” I say, at last. “I think the answer’s changed. Who are you?”
“Oh, everyone thinks I’m Athena,” he says. “But I’m actually Dionysos.” His mouth curls up at one corner, wicked and teasing. “I guess you have a type.”
I wait until I’m very sure the road is safe to punch him in the shoulder. He’s not wrong – and I can see it, as I look at him. I don’t work closely with the Ever Arriving, Bromios, Iakkhos, but he’s had a space on my altar for years. I know him as a god of liminality and contradiction, who moves between and around boundaries. I look at my boyfriend, and feel a deep fondness as I recognize that thread in him as well.
But the jokes are just too good. “Is it because you’re a sybarite?” I ask, teasing.
He pulls a face at me. “This, from the person who talks my ear off about how bad Percy Jackson’s version is.”
“Listen, Jason Mantzoukas is a national treasure,” I say, unable to stop myself. “But Mr. D is pure character assassination. It’s the whole Bacchus-”
He snickers, and I roll my eyes.
“Anyway,” I say, pulling myself back on track. “I think that’s a good fit for you. I like that.”
He looks pleased. “I know. You said you’re not sure about yours?”
I sigh, and shrug. “I think people see me as Hermes. I used to think they were right. I love Hermes, he’s my guy. But-”
“I don’t think they do,” my boyfriend says. I pause, expectant, and he shrugs back at me. “Maybe once they get to know you.”
“Oh?” I ask, a little tetchy. There have been a lot of people in my life eager to tell me about my relationships with the gods. It’s seldom gone well. “And who do you think I’m most like?”
My boyfriend pauses, considering. “Now, don’t get mad,” he says, at length. “Apollo.”
I take a deep breath and feel myself grinning. “I’m flattered as hell,” I reassure him. “But now you have to tell me why.”
Apollo statue in Temple of Apollo in the Forum Pompeii, 1st century BCE-1st century CE [Wikimedia Commons, CC 4.0]
Several years ago, when I was first expanding my altar for the Olympians, I got the feeling that Apollo ought to have something to represent him. It was an unremarkable weekday evening, and I cast around the apartment as I finished my dinner, trying to think of what would go well on the small desk I had set aside for that part of my pantheon. The obvious choice, of course, was the mask I had bought at the Renaissance Faire in high school, leather curved into a golden swoop of hair to represent the sun. Which, I thought, was kind of a shame – I liked that mask and had long hoped to find an excuse to wear it that didn’t involve channeling – but it was just too perfect to be used for anything else.
Once dinner was over, I set about the task with the single-mindedness that sometimes hits me when the moment has come for some magic. I boiled some water, filled it with salt, and pulled out the silver coin I use for these occasions. Sliding it into the water, I took a bay leaf and set it on fire, letting the ash – and then the whole leaf – fall into the water as well. Once it cooled enough, I took a white cloth – in this case, a paper towel – and soaked it in the blessed water, using it to clean the mask.
“Sing muses of Apollo, far-shooting son of Zeus and Leto, the all-glorious friend of man whose lyre brings joy to the gods,” I said, pulling on the Homeric Hymns as I made up my prayer. “Sing of the god of the laurel, who gifts are both disease and prophecy, who-”
I put the mask on the altar and my knees went out from under me. In one way, I was knelt on the floor of my apartment, my hands flat against the carpet and head bowed low. In another, I stood in Olympus, marble beneath my feet, and in front of me was a god of such radiant glory that I thought I would go blind. I hit my knees there, too, awed and overwhelmed at the sheer amount of power as I was regarded by the god of the sun.
So this is what it’s like to have a god flex at you, I thought to myself. I was used to gods showing off in various ways, of course, but mostly I got coincidences and pleasant meditations, not the wave after wave of awe that threatened to push me flat to the ground. You would be lucky, it seemed to say, to gain my attention. You would be blessed to burn in my name.
It was all a little much. I have no idea how long it went on for. When it passed, I realized I was still on my knees in my living room, the carpet making my hands feel numb. “I will remember you,” I managed, “and another hymn also.” And then I stumbled to my feet and got myself to bed, where I shivered with adrenaline for another hour before I could sleep.
Since then, I’d run into Apollo a handful of times in meditations or readings. It was never the same level of overwhelming awe – nothing in my life has ever quite matched that – but even purposefully dimmed I recognized him.
“Let me know when you really want to get down to it,” he said once, decked out in a tailored suit that read as old money. “I’m not interested if you’re just messing around.”
“Down to what?” I asked, and got an answer that gestured out past words towards big magic. I thought of myself as a spirit worker at most, but the offer seemed broader than that, and more practical.
“Thank you for the offer,” I said, and went back to all of the many things that pulled at my attention, and time went on. He became a figure on my altar, one of the three brothers – Apollo, Hermes, and Dionysos – that I was so fond of, but I was at my core still scared of him. We were never close.
Artus Quellinus the Elder, Apollo and Python, te between circa 1609 and circa 1668, terracotta [Wikimedia Commons, CC 4.0]
Over the past year, it has been hard to feel close to the gods. When I parted ways with Loki, and by extension the Norse pantheon, the lynchpin that I had built my spiritual practice (and to some extent, my self concept) was suddenly missing. In its absence, I had very few of my usual resources to fall back on as I navigated a year that demanded my emotional and physical reserves for the very mundane business of getting on with living.
It wasn’t surprising to look up, after the worst of the storms had passed, and realize that I had changed. Moving will do that. Divorce will do that. Death, and birth, and transition will do that. Over the course of 24 months I’d ground my way through all of those things and more. As I did an assessment of what I found on the other side, I realized that even the relationships I’d maintained were different. The Olympians were still there, immovable as ever, but I was viewing them from a slightly different place. Hermes – well, I could count on Hermes to be there for me. It was more surprising to find Apollo a little closer, a little less intimidating, looking more like someone I’d want to reach out to.
Slowly, I started to piece together a small altar, just for him. I needed something bright in my life, I thought. Maybe it was time for me to learn some magic.
The statue of Apollo Citharoedus by the Greek sculptor Leonidas Drosis (1836-1882) in the gardens of the Academy of Athens on October 25, 2019. [Wikimedia Commons, George E. Koronaios, CC 4.0]
Now, my boyfriend taps his fingers thoughtfully on the wheel. “I don’t know why you remind me of Apollo,” he says, slowly. “Something about – creativity and personal growth. Irregular ways of winning. A similar approach to learning.” He winks at me. “You just have the same taste, in my head.”
I beam at him. He’s not a Pagan – he’ll swear up and down it’s all hokum – but I trust his intuition more than almost anyone’s. “I’ll take it,” I say, settling back into my chair with great satisfaction.
“Plus,” he says dryly. “You’re really gay.”
I yelp with laughter and delight, and he chuckles, and the road keeps rolling by.
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