Chapter 3: Apollo

Distraught because there are no suitors, Psyche’s father consults the oracle of Apollo (3a, by Perin del Vaga, 1520's).



It is one father asking the other, the godfather, whom Psyche should marry. The wording of the oracle’s response is clever, because it fits Cupid, although the parents decide it’s a monster:

On some high mountain’s craggy summit place
The virgin, decked for deadly nuptial rites,
Nor hope a son-in-law of mortal birth
But a dire mischief, viperous and fierce,
Who flies through aether and with fire and sword
Tires and debilitates all things that are;
Terrific to the powers that reign on high,
Great Jupiter himself fears this winged pest
And streams and Stygian shades his power abhor.

What they understand is that Psyche is to be married to a dragon—the traditional sacrificial virgin to appease the dragon, which alchemy knows, too (3b, from the Atalanta Fugiens of 1618).



Thus a marriage procession proceeds up the mountain, more funereal than marital (3c-d, by the English pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones in the 1870’s).





Psyche is a willing sacrifice. The oracle must be obeyed.

Thus Psyche leaves her protective family. Spiritually, it is the outgrowing of childish faith. In Gnostic myth this step corresponds to Sophia emanating in the upper world from the Godhead, not yet joined to her consort. Psyche is fearful indeed (3e-f, by the Art Nouveau German artist Max Klinger, an 1880's book engraving).