Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned,
The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!
Omar Khayyam, born on May 18, 1048, punning on his surname, which means ‘tentmaker’

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on : nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Omar Khayyam

It's co-existence or no existence.
Bertrand Russell, English philosopher born on May 18, 1872

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell


Kallynteria, ancient Greece
Purification ceremonies of the goddess Pallas Athena.

Feast day of Apollo, ancient Greece
“Apollo ("destroy" or "excite"), is a god in Greek and Roman mythology, the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin of Artemis (goddess of the hunt). In later times he became equated with Helios, god of the sun, and by proxy his sister was equated with Selene, goddess of the moon. Later, he was known primarily as a solar deity. In Etruscan mythology, he was known as Aplu." Source

Who was Apollo?
Sacred to the god of music, poetry, divination and sunlight, today was for Apollo, the Greek deity of the sun. Today celebrates increasing light of the new season.

Apollo was the god of hunting, pestilence and healing, in Greek and possibly cultures in Asia Minor. He was worshipped around 1300 BCE and earlier, to about 400 CE.

His cult centred at Delos, Pylo-Delphi and other sanctuaries. Literary sources include the epic poems Iliad and Odyssey (Homer); Hymn to Apollo (Hesiod) as well as various temple hymns.

He was the epitome of youthful manliness, and a distant rather than an intimate god. His mother is Leto; she wandered the world, suffering until she chanced on the isle of Delos where she found refuge.

Apollo is generally portrayed in art as a god of hunters carrying a bow and arrows, associated with a stag or roe, and also pictured with lions. A gracious player of the lyre, he became the patron god of poets and leader of the Muses.

However, Apollo was a merciless killer when he had to be, killing the many children of Niobe. He slew the Delphic python and the Olympic Cyclopes, but suffered temporary banishment for his crimes.

The Celts revered him under various synonyms. The sixth-century BC Greek historian Hecateus wrote that an unnamed island we today can clearly identify as Britain, was inhabited by the Hyperboreans (northerners) who “venerate Apollo more than any other god” and that Apollo returned to the island every nineteen years, to much celebration. Hecateus did not know it but he was describing the 19-year lunar metonic cycle which was unknown to Greek scholars until a century after the historian wrote.

Apollo was Christianised as St Vincent, qv Wilson's Almanac, January 22.


Delphi and Apollo
From c. 1400 BCE, the Delphic shrine was sacred, initially probably to an earth goddess represented by a python. (Some believe that this and the legend of St Patrick of Ireland, tell of the supplanting of goddess religion by the masculine.) Snakes were part of Delphic lore until c. 800 BCE when Apollo was said to have slain the serpent guarding the sanctuary, establishing the oracle anew. At first the oracle priestess (sometimes two in shifts) could only be consulted on one day a year. She might have become entranced, by a drug perhaps; she answered questions in hexameter verse.

King Croesus simultaneously asked seven oracles “What is the King of Lydia doing now?” Only the Delphic oracle answered correctly that he was cooking a tortoise and a lamb in a pot of bronze.