Traditionally regarded as the heavenly abode of the Greek
gods and the site of the throne of Zeus, Olympos seems to have originally
existed as an idealized mountain that only later came to be associated
with a specific peak. The early epics, the Illiad and the Odyssey
(composed by Homer around 700BC) offer little information regarding the
geographic location of the heavenly mountain and there are several peaks
in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus that bear the name Olympos. The most favored
mythological choice is the tallest mountain range in Greece, the Olympos
massif, 100 kilometers southwest of the city of Thessaloniki in northern
Greece. The highest peak - shown in the photograph - is Mytikas at 2918
meters (9570 feet).
The deities beleived to have dwelled upon the
mythic mount were Zeus, the king of the gods; Hera, his wife; Poseidon and
Hades, his brothers; Demeter and Hestia, his sisters; and his children,
Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Athena, Hermes and Hephaestus. It is
interesting to note that these Olympian gods and goddesses were understood
in ancient times as representing idealized aspects of the muti-faceted
human soul or psyche. Worship of the deities was a method of invoking and
amplifying those aspects in the behavior and personality of the human
worshipper. Zeus was the god of mind and the intellect, and a protector of
strangers and the sanctity of oaths; Hera was a goddess of fertility and
the stages of a woman's life; Apollo represented law and order, and the
principles of moderation in moral, social and intellectual matters;
Aphrodite was a goddess of love and the overwhelming passions that drove
humans to irrational behavior; Hermes was the god of travelers, of sleep
and dreams and prophecy; Athena was spiritual wisdom incarnate; Hephaistos
was the god of the arts; and Ares represented the dark, bloodthirsty
aspect of human nature.
These gods and goddesses did not actually
live upon Olympos, rather the ancient myth can be understood to be a
metaphor for the power of the sacred mountain. This spiritual power had
drawn hermits and monks to live in the caves and forests of the mountain
since long before the dawn of the Christian era. With the coming of
Christianity the myths and legends of the old Greeks were supressed and
forgotten, and the holy mountain was seldom visited. Today, weekend hikers
and teenagers on the vagabond trail through Europe dash up and down the
peak in a day. It is certainly a beautiful place for such a hasty hike,
yet to draw upon the real magic of Olympos one must come as a pilgrim and
stay some quiet days in the woods. The author has lived for a month in the
forests of the sacred peak and experienced that the spirits of the old
gods and goddesses are still powerfully
present.
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