Exploring the epithets of Apollo

So, in his names we may find the answer. In the epithets he bears, in the way man named him as honor for his aid.

Perhaps the one I have already been invoking here is best to start with, Apollo Epikourios, who is Apollo the Helper or Healer.

Since I am placing myself in his hands in an attempt to better understand myself and therefore heal myself. It is important to understand that like all the gods, apollo is bringer of both light and darkness. Both healing and disease. He is balanced in a world that requires such balance to exist. Therefore when i asked apollo for help and rather than send me clear cut answers he sent me turmoil and a sense of disappointment, I was naturally worried. But the truth is that I should have expected it. The Gods seldom make things easy for us. We may be guided, but at every step on that path it is we who must make decisions, we who must choose, we who must interpret what we see around us properly while at the same time accepting that each interpretation may indeed be the correct one given a certain place and time and set of circumstances.

So when i seek out apollo and ask him to guide me and he chooses instead to make me sick, give me odd dreams and nightmares, make me feel insufficient to the tasks I place before myself, what is it he is saying to me?

Apollo Epikourios is the healer, the helper, but how he chooses to help is another thing to consider here.

One of the many forms of aid sought from Apollo and his mythic son Asklepios, who I see as an aspect of Apollo in much the same way as I see Herakles as an aspect of Zeus, was called incubation. Incubation is a form of intentional dreaming, if you will, but not in the same sense as one might consider lucid dreaming, but as a kind of deprivation.

Essentially, a person went to a temple, or perhaps a sacred cave, or some such place, and sought to remain in the presence of the sacred in an attempt to have the God guide one or perhaps heal one directly.

I have always wanted to do this, but I simply do not have any such place to turn to. Where should I go?

I have considered turning a large closet into a sacred space of this kind. Large enough to sleep in if necessary, though probably not comfortably, and perhaps find a way to connect.

If I really seek to heal myself, then I have to try this. Perhaps this will be a good project to document here...